Proposing a New App Developer Upload Process

[Emmet Hikory]

Michael Terry wrote:
> On 04/09/12 10:29, Michael Hall wrote:
> >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?
> 
> I believe badly.  But it's not been a huge issue I suspect because
> (a) relatively low volume of packages which get put in Ubuntu first,
> and (b) due diligence by uploaders to universe that there aren't
> likely to be conflicts (i.e. there aren't other upstreams with the
> same name).

    As a historical note, (a) was not always true, and as many as one
in twelve packages in Ubuntu were not present in Debian.  In part as
a result of the issues encountered with this, significant effort was
made to add these packages to Debian or remove them from the archive
(frequently replacing them with other packages from Debian).  While
this was a useful way to reduce the MOTU effort required to review
and maintain these packages, it did make (a) true, and contributed
significantly to the perception that adding packages to Ubuntu was
hard or impossible (as those less familiar with our development model
would often balk when told "Looks like a nice package, I'll upload it
to Debian for you, and we'll get it for the next release", especially
before backports was safe to use).

-- 
Emmet HIKORY