DEX finishes first batch of derivative patches for Debian
It’s been a few months since Zack and I announced the DEX project, which aims to improve the Debian ecosystem by working jointly with derivative distributions.
Our first milestone
The goal of our first project, nicknamed ancient-patches, was to clear out an old batch of a few hundred Ubuntu patches whose status was unclear. We couldn’t tell which ones had been merged into Debian, which were waiting in the BTS, and which had yet to be submitted to Debian. All of them were several years old.
I’m pleased to announce that this project is now complete. Thanks to help from David Paleino, Colin Watson, Nathan Handler and Steve Langasek, we were able to clear over 95% of the patches in a matter of days. These were the easy ones: patches which were obsolete, or had already been applied. We discussed the remainder, and resolved all of the patches whose status was still unclear. This left the harder ones: patches stalled in the BTS, and patches where there was no consensus about what to do with them.
One of the stalled patches was merged into Debian via an NMU, eliminating the delta between Debian and Ubuntu. Another had been submitted to Debian by a third party, but was no longer shipping in Ubuntu, so we considered it obsolete for purposes of this project.
This has left only two patches out of the original list of 277. Both of them are filed in the BTS and have been discussed with the relevant maintainer team. One of them is expected to be obsoleted when a new upstream version is packaged, which implements similar functionality. The other is being discussed with the upstream developers, but there is no conclusion yet about whether it can be merged upstream or in Debian.
Conclusions
Although we weren’t quite able to clear the whole list, we still consider the project to be a success because:
- We ensured that all of the patches received due consideration for inclusion in Debian
- We proved the concept of DEX, with developers from Debian and derivatives cooperating on a common goal and sharing tools
- Most importantly, we learned from the experience
What’s next
In the most recent DEX update on debian-derivatives, I highlighted a few important events for DEX:
- Our second major project, nicknamed “big-merges”, will begin soon. Our goal is to identify the few packages which are most diverged between Debian and Ubuntu, and work to get them as close to identical as possible. If you have suggestions for packages to focus on, let us know!
- Allison Randal is beginning a DEX project to implement the Python 2.7 transition across Debian and Ubuntu
- Nathan Handler is working on a Summer of Code project to develop specialized tools to help with this kind of cross-distribution teamwork
- Zack is organizing a derivatives BoF at DebConf 11
We’re looking forward to seeing DEX develop further. If you’d like to get involved, come and join us on the debian-derivatives mailing list or IRC (#debian-derivatives on freenodeOFTC).
Matt Zimmerman and Stefano Zacchiroli
Brilliant work guys! Getting these into Debian makes both our lives better! (And stops a few complainers :D )
Thanks everyone for all your hard work.
Jussi Schultink
June 8, 2011 at 14:59
[…] on their progress. Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu and Debian developer (among many other things), has blogged that their first goal has been […]
The Fruits of DEX Begin to Emerge | PHP World
June 8, 2011 at 19:49
[…] технический директор компании Canonical написал в своем блоге, что команда Ubuntu DEX Team завершила первый этап, […]
Debian-Ubuntu » Проект DEX: второй этап работы по совместимости пакетов между Debian и Ubuntu
June 9, 2011 at 05:28
Awesome work!
Chris
June 9, 2011 at 17:36
[…] The goal of our first project, nicknamed ancient-patches, was to clear out an old batch of a few hundred Ubuntu patches whose status was unclear. We couldn’t tell which ones had been merged into Debian, which were waiting in the BTS, and which had yet to be submitted to Debian. All of them were several years old. I’m pleased to announce that this project is now complete. More here […]
DEX finishes first batch of derivative patches for Debian | Debian-News.net - Your one stop for news about Debian
June 9, 2011 at 19:40
[…] укреплением сотрудничества дистрибутивов Ubuntu и Debian, опубликовал отчет с первыми результатами деятельности проекта DEX, […]
В рамках проекта DEX завершен первый этап синхронизации наработок Ubuntu с Debian
June 13, 2011 at 00:15
[…] укреплением сотрудничества дистрибутивов Ubuntu и Debian, опубликовал отчет с первыми результатами деятельности проекта DEX, […]
В рамках проекта DEX завершен первый этап синхронизации наработок Ubuntu с Debian | Клуб Системных Администраторов
June 13, 2011 at 01:43
[…] pojawiły się pierwsze efekty funkcjonowania DEX-a. Jak poinformował Matt Zimmerman na swoim blogu na pierwszy ogień poszły łatki Ubuntu, które były liczone w setkach a ich status nie do końca […]
Debian-Linux.pl – Informacje i aktualności ze świata Debiana » Pierwsze efekty pracy projektu DEX
June 13, 2011 at 11:13
[…] anticipato da Matt Zimmerman sul suo blog, il progetto DEX, lanciato dallo stesso Zimmerman e da Zacchiroli, […]
» Il primo risultato del progetto DEX Debianizzati.Org
June 16, 2011 at 16:47