OT - Re: [Utnubu-discuss] porting pyalsaaudio from Utnubu

[Reinhard Tartler]

On 11/19/05, Hamish Moffatt <hamish at debian.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 12:49:15PM +0100, Philipp Kern wrote:
> > Well. The Ubuntu Masters of the Universe do not generally see their
> > job in getting packages into Debian, too. Some of them bother to file
> > a RFP/ITP in Debian, but as most of them are no DDs they rely on
> > support of Debian developers. On the other hand there are universe
> > uploaders which do only upload to Ubuntu and do not seem to bother
> > about Debian at all.
>
> It would be interesting to know why there are Universe maintainers
> (non-Canonical employees) who are not DDs.. why do they chose to
> contribute to Ubuntu rather than Debian?

So you are talking about people like me. I do maintain 2 (gaming
related) packages in debian, but I also work on Ubuntu/universe.  Why?
There are some reasons for that.

In debian, it is nice when you can work on your own, and are not that
dependent on the collaboration on fellow developers. My 2 packages are
such packages. I try to keep them bugfree and usable in both debian
and ubuntu. (In fact, I'm really considering applying for NM in
debian, but I still have concerns that I would fail the very
burocratic procedures, so I don't apply)

When working on ubuntu, I really enjoy the team spirit. It takes way
more work to do that, but you see result way faster than in debian.
This is certainly due to the 6 month release cycle.

When working with DD's, I also made very mixed experiences. Sometimes,
the collaboration was excellent, and a fix was soon uploaded to
debian. On other occasions, requests, may they directed via email
directly or via bts have been ignored. I find this very frustrating,
that sometimes it is very hard to fix bugs in Debian, when the DD is
not available or ignorant.

I ubuntu, I did not see any communication problems yet. When I see a
package in universe with a bug, which I need fixed, I check the debian
bts, if a fix is available there, and take that. If not, I do not
hesitate to ping the last uploader on irc or email, and upload a fixed
package afterwards.

This works mainly because of 2 reasons: We have debian and the DDs,
which does the main work. So generally, packages in universe are in
good shape. The other reason is that we are a quite small team, so
communication is quite cheap.

To summarize: Working in ubuntu/universe is a completly different
workflow. It is way faster and you get results immediately. In order
to maintain that we MOTUs are highly dependent of DDs to keep their
packages in good shape.

Now back to the original problem: Packages in universe which are not
(yet) in debian: In order to get a NEW package in ubuntu, we require
approval from 2 different MOTUs (it used to be 3). To facilitate that,
Stefan Potyra and me have written http://revu.tauware.de/, a place
where people can upload random stuff and get that reviewed by us. On
the first glance, it might look like a replacement to
mentors.debian.net, but it has a bit different intention: on REVU, we
can look and comment at the packages directly, to shorten the
communication overhead between contributors and reviewers.

There doesn't exist anything like that in debian. In debian, you need
to find 1 sponsor, which reviews the package and eventually uploads it
to debian. For me 2 packages in debian, I found 2 sponsors sponsoring
my uploads. Thanks for that! It wasn't that hard, I don't want to
complain at all, but from my POV, it took significant more
communication overhead to get it done.

And there is another point: In universe, we apparently don't really do
that hard checks as usual sponsors do.  There have been some
complaints from DDs (like Sven Luther) demanding very carefully
checking of packages, because of some (maybe potential?) violations to
the policy.

> > Universe looks more like uploading new packages directly into it
> > instead of first adding them to Debian and syncing back. It would be
> > Debian's task, in this case Utnubu's, to setup something with syncs
> > such additions in Ubuntu back into Debian. It's just that those new
>
> I'm not sure if that is better than finding someone to maintain the
> package in Debian directly.

Of course it would be better if there was a dedicated package
maintainer in debian. But it is generally quite hard for us to find
one. So we can only file RFP's and hope that some DD or the utnubu
team take over maintainership in debian. That way, both project get
most of the package.

I think the best think utnubu can do is provide a constantly updated
list of packages, which are in universe but not in debian, along with
status report whats wrong with the package. Possible example for
status would be:

  * 'under consideration for maintainership by utnubu',
  * 'has interested Maintainer for adopting package' or
  * 'package is unacceptable/unfit for debian'

And hope that someone takes over maintainership for packages.

--
regards,
    Reinhard