Feeding changes back to Debian

[Daniel Stone]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 12:04:56PM -0400, Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> I know some people -- like Ian Murdock -- were worried that
> Ubuntu would end up weakening Debian rather than adding to
> it. I'm curious how we're doing. For instance, is Debian
> development of X.org progressing any faster because Ubuntu
> is using X.org in Breezy? I'd think that Ubuntu would
> actually help Etch move toward stability.

Yes.  Debian's X.Org packages were made by starting with the Ubuntu
packages from Hoary, and applying several tweaks and clean-ups.  So it's
safe to say that they could not have been done without Ubuntu, at least
the way they were done.

> Similarly: are Ubuntu packages staying compatible with
> Debian? If one takes an Ubuntu package and strips the
> 'ubuntu' suffix off the package name, does it become a
> Debian package?

Yes and no.  Yes, it's a .deb that all the tools recognise.  No, it is
not necessarily a 'Debian package' (in the terms of something that
comes from Debian), because it will have Ubuntu-specific changes.  It
will almost certainly install and work on Debian, but it won't
necessarily be a Debian package per se.