Getting new packages into Ubuntu

[Allison Randal]

On 10/10/2011 03:42 PM, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Le lundi 10 octobre 2011 à 10:23 -0400, Scott Kitterman a écrit :
>>
>> If we try to reduce the work to the available developers by reducing
>> the scope 
>> of the archive, then we are also reducing the pool of potentially
>> interested 
>> developers as well. 
> 
> It does make sense to freeze and ship a consistent archive for the
> system components (base system, plumbers, desktop shells, default
> applications), it doesn't make sense to try to make small softwares
> (ubuntu-tweaks, simple-lightdm-manager, etc) respect our freezes, cycle,
> rely on acl to upload to the main archive, etc

We essentially have three classes of packages in Ubuntu:

- Lightweight applications, which I would encourage to apply through
developer.ubuntu.com (i.e. Extras/ARB), and we can help the developer
figure out if it makes sense to release through extras, submit upstream
to Debian (possibly combined with an Ubuntu backport, depending on where
we are in the cycle), or submit to main/universe.

- General purpose system components, large applications, and everything
else that isn't specific to Ubuntu. These should submit upstream to Debian.

- System components that are specific to Ubuntu. There aren't many of
these, but they do exist. They only really make sense when tied to a
particular release, and need the benefit of integration testing with
that release, so should participate in the usual Ubuntu development
cycle. It's not entirely clear what channel these should use. If it's
not a large set of packages, perhaps the current practice of working
through the human network of Ubuntu developers is enough. REVU isn't
very actively used/developed at the moment.

Allison