New Launchpad feature: Diff between Sid and Oneiric

[Dave Walker]

On 16/06/11 07:03, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> There's now support in launchpad for displaying source package diffs
> between what's in ubuntu oneiric and what's in debian sid.  Check it out:
>
>    https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/+localpackagediffs
>
> This is an outcome of the Launchpad team's current 'Derived Distros'
> development focus.  The primary objective is to make life easier from
> people making derivatives of Ubuntu such as OEMs, but since Ubuntu
> itself is a derivative of Debian, it looks like this is going to win us
> some nifty new functionality too.  This includes a comment area to allow
> packagers to mark merges they're working on or leave notes for other
> packagers, buttons to make it easier to sync one or more packages
> straight from debian, and functionality for derived distros to push
> their changes back up to us more easily.
>
> For more info on what's in the plans, see:
>
>    https://dev.launchpad.net/LEP/DerivativeDistributions
>    https://launchpad.net/launchpad-project/+bugs?field.tag=derivation
>
> Bryce
>

Hi Bryce,

This is a great new feature, and certainly a step in the right 
direction.  I see this as really good news, so thanks for sharing it 
with us.

I'd like to make a few suggestions, to make this more useful to my workflow:

  * Ability to diff legacy source packages ubuntu/debian delta.
     - There have been multiple occasions where I have have dget'd the 
sid source package from snapshot.debian.org and created a debdiff from a 
prior ubuntu merge to /really/ see what the delta is.  The current 
autogenerated diff per source package doesn't cut it for merges, as it 
includes the Debian changes.  I want to view just what the merge delta was.

* Being able to filter by subscribed packages for a given team or user.
    - The https://bugs.launchpad.net/~LPID/+packagebugs
    - This allows a given user or group to keep an idea of where the 
packages differ from sid.  Especially useful for a team or user to be 
able to monitor the core of packages that they need to deliver.

* Should probably be able to also see the package sets, and possibly 
filter by.

* Being able to easily see the debian/changelog entries for version > 
ubuntu current version.
    - This allows to quickly see how important the changes are.

* The new page should probably indicate the sponsor of the Ubuntu upload 
(if present).

* I wonder if this feature set will be exposed by the API? :)

To date, i have been maintaining a cron'ed list[0] of packages where 
Debian is a higher version than Ubuntu for packages ~ubuntu-server is 
subscribed to, and the ubuntu-server package set.  I have found it most 
useful, I hope Launchpad will be able to superseed my list and make it 
more useful.

[0] http://people.ubuntu.com/~davewalker/server-sid-new.txt

Thanks again!

Kind Regards,
Dave Walker