New Launchpad feature: Diff between Sid and Oneiric

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:26:50AM +0100, Dave Walker wrote:
> 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:

Thanks, I'll gather up suggestions, prioritize, and pass back to LP.

>  * 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.

Agreed, I do this all the time myself.

> * 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.

I think these are already in the plans.

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

Would be nice

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

Could that be TMI?

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

Yes
https://launchpad.net/+apidoc/devel.html#distro_series_difference

> 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

Sounds like several of us have been doing vaguely similar things:

  http://www.bryceharrington.org/X/Reports/ubuntu-x-swat/versions-current.html
  http://people.canonical.com/~platform/desktop/versions.html

The ink's fairly dry on the Derived Distro LEP.  But if there's
sufficient bang for the buck to gain, we could always try proposing a
follow up on it.

Bryce