New software created for Ubuntu

[Chow Loong Jin]

On Monday 03,May,2010 12:13 PM, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> I'm GSoC student working on Ubuntu usb-creator. It is a general
> software and I don't see any reason why it cannot be Debian
> branded as well e.g. Debian USB Creator.

It's not branded as anything of that sort, but rather "Startup Disk Creator"

> I've updated packaging to be lintian clean & it builds fine in sid pbuilder.
> 
> Although usb-creator is much smaller application than software
> center, does it make sence to push changes to Debian as well?
> 
> With software and themes developed for Ubuntu we would still want to reveal it
> in Ubuntu first =) otherwise we are "loosing" our competitive edge over Debian.

I'd rather you get rid of this kind of mindset. This isn't a competition. Ubuntu
and Debian have slightly different focuses, and the mindset we should be having
is to push our changes as far upstream as possible so that as many people as
possible may benefit from our work.

Moreover, you mentioned you're a usb-creator developer, meaning that you're the
upstream. As a responsible upstream, what you should be doing is pushing your
software to as many distributions as possible, or at the very least, making your
software in a way that can be packaged in other distributions.

It is this kind of mindset that causes tension to grow between Debian and Ubuntu.

> 
> The idea is to keep high quality packaging suitable for both distributions and
> derivatives. But I have some ubuntu->debian "policy" questions:
> 
> 1) Numbering schemes
> 
>    Ubuntu        Debian
> 1  NNN           NNN-1
> 2  NNN-0ubuntu1  NNN-1
> 3  NNN-1+ubuntu1 NNN-1~debian1
> 3  NNN           NNNdebian1
> 
> Generally during development we want to keep our version number higher then
> debian and avoid having these packages popping up in Merge-o-Matic. Also during
> development cycle these packages will have frequent uploads and probably
> considered experimental by debian quality standards. So which version numbering
> scheme shall we use?

If it is considered experimental by Debian quality standards, stick it in Debian
Experimental and merge or sync it over. This is no good reason for changing the
version numbering scheme.

> 2) watch file pointing to orig.tar.* archive.ubuntu.com to play nice with PTS

No. If there is an orig.tar.*, then it should be released in some upstream site.
Moreover, this will break uscan on Ubuntu spectacularly, since uscan will then
only show packages that are already uploaded to the Ubuntu archives.

> 
> 3) "upstream" bugtracker being launchpad project and/or ubuntu package on
> launchpad

Launchpad acts as a project tracker for both projects and distributions.
Ubuntu-based projects are mostly already launchpad.net, so the bugtracker should
just be bugs.launchpad.net/<project>. The separation between
launchpad.net/<project> and launchpad.net/ubuntu/<project> is already clearly
defined and should continue to be that way.

> 
> 4) translations export
> 
> These type of projects are generally translated by Ubuntu Translation Group and
> uploaded into the archive independently of the tarballs via langpacks. I don't
> believe launchpad can drop ubuntu translations onto upstream project branches
> yet. So when creating a release for debian a tarball needs to be cut with
> translation export from Rosetta or translations should be packaged as a separate
> tarball component for debian with dpkg-vendor magic.

And what about the other 128379121 different distros out there? Why don't you as
the upstream just do the extra work of grabbing the .po files from Launchpad and
sticking it into your tarballs before releasing? There might even be an
automated way, but I'm not sure.

> 
> 5) Branding
> 
> Images, icons, desktop files, documentations and references to distro name.
> 
> All images either replaced at build time or use XDG icon/theme spec and
> substitute vendor name in desktop files/documentation/ui at build time?
> 
> Or keep it neutral? Cause with these packages Ubuntu building strong brand
> identity and we would want to keep it like that.
> 
> Also what about debian users who want Ubuntu branding and vice versa?
> dpkg-reconfigure magic? We also have Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Studio etc.... Do they
> need branded Software Centers or Usb Creators?

If Debian users want Ubuntu branding they can very well just use Ubuntu. If I
recall correctly, Openoffice is one package that has branding done at the
packaging level in both Debian and Ubuntu. Rather than branding a distro name
onto it, I think it should be enough to just Copyright © Canonical and put a
generic name onto it.

Honestly speaking, I'm yet to find one desktop file (besides Ubuntu Software
Center which seems to be special) that contains Ubuntu's name in it.

> 
> 6) Maintainance
> 
> Keep bzr-buildpackage branches on launchpad with a debian branch to merge fixes
> such that we can build both ubuntu & debian branded packages painlessly and
> merge changes easily.

The Vcs is up to the maintainer of the package. Alioth is only used for
convenience. I stick my packages in Alioth's git repository since Launchpad
sucks grandly in Asian countries and doesn't have git support.

> 
> 7) Release schedule
> 
> On ubuntu 0-day upload to debian 15-day delay queue?

How about upload to both at once, using syncpackage magic, so you don't have to
keep track of so many different delays. Artificially imposing a delay onto
Debian is not fair as an upstream.

-- 
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin

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