Idea: review + massive sync of Debian changes not involving new upstream versions?

[Stefan Lesicnik]

----- "Benjamin Drung" <bdrung at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Am Mittwoch, den 17.03.2010, 19:43 +0100 schrieb Lucas Nussbaum:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 5 lines summary:
> >   For universe packages that don't have anybody looking at them, I
> >   propose that, instead of letting them rot after Debian Import
> Freeze,
> >   we instead review the Debian changes that don't introduce new
> upstream
> >   versions, and continue to sync them (manually) to Ubuntu to get
> all
> >   the bug fixes that happen in Debian.
> > 
> > --verbose version:
> > I think that it is obvious that, except for some small sets of
> packages,
> > most of the packages in universe are not really cared about in
> Ubuntu,
> > and are just synced from Debian, with the occasional bug fixes.
> > 
> > Since we are past Debian Import Freeze, fixes made in Debian no
> longer
> > migrate automatically to Ubuntu. As a result, important bug fixes
> might
> > happen in Debian without anyone on the Ubuntu side noticing.
> > 
> > It seems to me that it would actually result in a big improvement
> in
> > Ubuntu's quality if, instead, we just continued to sync Debian
> changes
> > in universe packages. Of course, we cannot just continue to sync
> all
> > changes until the release. But it would probably make sense to sync
> many
> > changes not involving new upstream versions, after a quick manual
> > review. Mistakes will probably be made (introducing new bugs), but
> new
> > uploads that don't involve a new upstream version are usually
> reasonably
> > safe, and it also means that lots of bugs will be fixed in the
> process.
> > 
> > Of course, it's already possible to do that manually. But I think
> that
> > we could use a more efficient infrastructure: there's currently no
> easy
> > way to see the list of packages that have a newer version in Debian
> > together with their changelog entries. And submitting a lot of sync
> > requests to launchpad is not very efficient.
> > 
> > Comments?
> 
> I like the idea.

Sounds like a good idea, the security team does something similar to watch new security fixes with a python app i wrote [0].
Maybe it can help.

[0] - http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-security/d2u/

Stefan