Hi, Joey. On Oct 12 2005, Joey Hess wrote: > Rogério Brito wrote: > > The Ubuntu people are synchronizing their work with Debian all the > > time > > Ubuntu has a general policy of not sending patches back to Debian > developers.
I didn't know that. > They make their patches available on a website in lumps[1] of varying > utility and expect Debian to go look at them and integrate them back > in. I also didn't know that. And seeing the base-config case, it is surprising to see the huge patches that they made. This would surely be a case where Linus Torvalds's policy of sending a series of patches, each doing just a single thing and applied on the top of the ones before it would be appropriate. > This doesn't work as well as some other techniques could. Indeed. How has been the communication between the projects? > Most of the cases of Ubuntu patches being integrated back into Debian > are cases where: > > a. The Ubuntu developer is a maintainer of the Debian package. > > b. A Debian developer has spare time to go look at patches that might > or might not be even applicable to Debian. Seeing the number of changelog messages with ubuntu release names, I thought that the interaction was bigger. > c. Possibly the utnubu (note spelling) project filtered a patch back > from Ubuntu to Debian. I just visited the utnubu project and was surprised to know that it actually happened, as it shouldn't even have existed in the first place. It surely seems to be as a lack of proper contact between the projects. :-( Sad thing, since a joint effort would have made things progress faster. > Actually Debian has had a tradition of NMUs for much longer than team > maintenance. But NMUs are/were (please, correct me if I am wrong here) viewed as a last resort, for not "stepping in the maintainer's toes". And sometimes, the maintainer doesn't give a signal of life for a long time. Say, more than one year. In this case, team maintainership would be much better. And I am happy to see this more and more used in Debian. > All you have to do is bring a real bug to another developer's > attention. The problem is that doing this isn't as easy as it sounds. Even if you have a good, short, clear patch, getting another developer's attention isn't that easy. Or, at least, it wasn't the last times I tried. But, then, perhaps, I contacted, the "wrong" developers. :-) > (Which, it's worth noting, you were able to do with vrms. :-P) Indeed. :-) Thank you, Rogério Brito. -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de Homepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
