Proposing a New App Developer Upload Process

[Emmet Hikory]

Michael Hall wrote:
> > We add an Extras package "foo" in precise.  Then in quantal, we sync in
> > some new, unrelated package "foo" from Debian that happens to share the
> > same name.  Now users that installed "foo" in precise that upgrade to
> > quantal will be replacing their "foo" package with a completely
> > unrelated one.
> > 
> 
> It's possible for me to upload a package to Universe in Precise's
> development phase, then for an unrelated package by the same name to be
> in Debian's archives when we do the Quantal sync.
> 
> How is this currently handled?

    The package would be listed as manual-merge, and the developer who
looked at the merge would be expected to notice that these were not the
same package at all, potentially raising the issue on ubuntu-motu@ for
discussion, or potentially resolving the issue with interested parties
in some other way.  I don't remember this happening, although we've had
a few cases where packages added to Ubuntu were later added to Debian with
different names, in which cases we carried a transitional dummy binary
package and associated patch until the next LTS.

    There have been a couple cases where we introduced filesystem conflicts
as a result of new-in-Ubuntu packages: these were generally resolved by
lengthy discussions with the relevant Debian maintainers and upstreams, with
the end result that both previously conflicting packages were added to Debian,
and the conflicts resolved there (I believe one of these transitions required
two Debian releases, so such a process may not be fast, but it worked before).

-- 
Emmet HIKORY