Deprecating the wiki-based Packaging Guide

[Scott Kitterman]

Barry Warsaw <barry at ubuntu.com> wrote:

>On Dec 17, 2012, at 07:52 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>
>>UDD is not mature or reliable enough to be presented to new users as
>"the"
>>way to do packaging for Ubuntu.  I think the current guide is fatally
>flawed
>>as is.
>
>Yes, it's frustrating when you need to work on a package that has
>import
>failures, and yes, I wish we had more cycles to devote to fixing this,
>but the
>majority of packages import just fine, and UDD (IMHO and YMMV) has
>enormous
>benefits which outweigh those frustrations.
>
>Of course, I'm not saying that traditional packaging shouldn't also be
>described.
>
>-Barry

It seems obvious to me that the standard approach ought to be the reliable one.  Making the UDD based approach 'normal' ensures people need to know two ways to do it and for introductory material, I think that is clearly suboptimal.

Also, I think the benefits primarily accrue to people that use UDD a lot.  The benefits to people that don't use it quite regularly are minimal.  This reinforces the idea it's not the right default to present.

Finally, it's a more complex toolset that raises the barrier to entry for newcomers.  I don't think that's what we want.

Scott K