launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Christian Robottom Reis <kiko@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:44:27PM -0500, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> About 1/3 of all packaging links between Lucid and upstream projects are
> to source package that are not in Lucid. I think there are two causes
> for this. The first is that links are not validated because the design
> allows upstreams to link to *any* distribution series. The second is
> that users have co-opted this feature in an effort to indicate it built
> packages. We need to re-examine our intent from both Ubuntu's and the

I don't understand the second part here -- what do you mean "indicate it
built packages" -- what do you mean by "it" and for what release?

> The feature is limited because the distributions and their series must
> be registered in Launchpad. Even if they are, Launchpad does not know
> the versions in other distributions to present to the user. This is not
> entirely true because Launchpad does know something of Debian, but that
> information is always stale and not immediately available. So of the
> many thousands of packaging link, this is a summary on the non-Ubuntu
> links:
>         
>         Debian 76
>         Guadalinex 4
>         Gentoo 1
> 
> To support other distributions, Launchpad records the *kind* of
> packaging: primary or included. Ubuntu only cares about primary links
> because what it cares about is knowing the bug tracker, and development
> branch of the upstream. The 'included' links are a distraction for
> Ubuntu. They are also confusing to upstreams; packaging is not their
> first concern.
> 
> PROPOSAL: If we choose to desupport other distros, we can remove the
> confusing aspect of the packaging form.

I think instead we could just allow the links to be done to
distribution, and where possible the annotation with distroseries is
added, where it's not available, just let it be.

>       * Upstream creates an Ubuntu package for Karmic.
>       * Upstream does not see a way to link a archive to the project.
>       * Upstream uses <project>/<series>/+addpackage to state that a
>         package was made.
>       * Upstream is saddened to see that Launchpad does not know the
>         version of the package, and the links do not go to the archive;
>         they go to a source package that says the package does not
>         exist.

We could fix the latter with smarter heuristics if we really wanted to.
But I agree this is a broken story.

> Launchpad could verify that the package is in the distroseries and
> prevent upstream from creating impossible links. This ensures that every
> package listed will have an official version number listed. This may
> disappoint upstream users use consider their packages just as important
> as Ubuntu's official packages.
> 
> Launchpad could ask the upstream user to specify that the link is not
> for an official archive, and possibly allow the user to specify a PPA.
> This overlaps with the official-project-ppas feature that we hope to
> build in our life time.

Yeah, I think doing both of the above makes more sense. But let's look
at it from a higher-level perspective: the issue is that packaging seems
to be useful metadata, but it's not clear anywhere what it might be
useful for. So I think tackling that first should make the UI much
easier to get right.

I had a good meeting with Martin A. and we talked over what we should
change in the data model; Mark was happy with the idea and I believe it
was essentially to make the linkage's distroseries and productseries
columns optional, and using that information in a smart way (i.e.
superseding it as updates were made, perhaps similarly to how the
package-publication model works). Have you thought about implementing
that as part of your fix-packaging project? 
-- 
Christian Robottom Reis | [+55 16] 3376 0125 | http://launchpad.net/~kiko
                        | [+55 16] 9112 6430 | http://async.com.br/~kiko