Kirya [.net]

1 | Meneer R

March 14th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

I think it really depends on what _you_ want. 99% of the bugs are not Ubuntu specific. Then again, a large portion of the bugs are not Debian’s bugs either.

If its packaging, Ubuntu will patch it itself. You could just wait for it and steal the patch

If its upstream, Ubuntu bug triagers locate or fill a bug upstream and link the bug-reports.

As to integrating, why not add more pressure to Canonical to release the source to launchpad (they say they want to eventually) and have Debian switch to that. It really is the most user-friendly bug-reporting system.

That’s really the only problem with it: you get bug reports from people that are not very capable of determing whats going on. There is more noise there than any other bug tracker i’ve seen.

Since Ubuntu tries to fix the packaging issues themselves they don’t sent the bug upstreams. I think this is because Debian asked them _not to_ since they tend to apply their own patches as well. The problem with this is that without the bug-report Debian is not notified nor do you get the patch.

I think Ubuntu finds and patches lots of bugs not found or patches by Debian because of the very different use cases. Ubuntu is used by less experienced users as a desktop OS and by webmasters that manage their own dedicated server. A sysadmin wouldn’t use Ubuntu though, but a web-master would prefer the same environment he uses on his desktop and/or test-machiene.

Then again, this really comes down to the fact that Ubuntu and Debian should somehow ‘merge’. Debian Unstable becoming Ubuntu, Ubuntu becoming Debian Testing, etc. Would make lots of sense and yet keep both projects doing what they do best. Package the bazaar (debian unstable), unify it (ubuntu), test it on as many platforms as possible (debian testing) and deploy it in mission-critical platforms (debian stable).

Just my two cents. I love what Debian stands for, but i’m a happy Ubuntu camper. These two worlds fighting makes no sense. Its like the israelites and palestine. They think they are all that different, yet the rest of the world couldn’t tell one apart from the other.

2 | Julien

March 15th, 2007 at 8:01 am

Thanks for your reply.

One thing I can’t understand: who maintains packages in the Universe component in Ubuntu? You talk about “stealing” patches, but I had understood that nobody takes care of these packages, which explains my question.

If it’s true that someone is responsible for these packages, then, the choice is quite easy (at least for me). But I wouldn’t want to leave a major bug affecting Ubuntu without anybody trying to fix it. But then, the issue is to be aware of this bug…

I must say I am not familiar at all with the way Ubuntu works, as I have never used it - this explains why my question could seem odd.

3 | Dean

March 15th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

These are the people responsible for the Universe packages: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-dev/+members

There is not a designated maintainer per package, however sometimes a certain package may be mainly cared for by a certain person(s) who has an interest in that package.

4 | Julien

March 15th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

Great, this does give the answer to my question - I am sure these people would be fair enough to contact the Debian maintainer in case of a major bug affecting a package in Universe.

I think I will however keep an eye on the bug reports submitted against these packages when my free time allows it.