> In the coming weeks our Starcraft team (responsible for Snapcraft 2, Rockcraft 5, Charmcraft 1) will begin prototyping debcraft, which will (in time) become the de facto method for creating, testing and uploading packages to the Ubuntu archive.
Hopefully this won't in any way adversely affect development and maintenance of packages for Debian.
Nobody wants embrace-extend-extinguish, nor poaching of volunteers, nor Debian starting to get second-hand packaging that goes to Ubuntu first, etc., even accidentally.
> The Debcrafters must spend the majority of their work time on Ubuntu, but they will be encouraged to spend a day per week contributing to other distributions to gain understanding, and bring fresh perspectives to Ubuntu (and the reverse, hopefully!). This will be structured as a literal day per week, agreed with the team management - for example “I work on NixOS on Tuesdays”.
That's a good open source company practice. And takes some of the edge off of Ubuntu getting so much mileage out of Debian effort, but making the brand all their commercial one.
I'll still continue to be all about Debian Stable, since it's actually been better for production use than Ubuntu has been for me.
Indeed, we'll need to be very careful to ensure that a new tool doesn't preclude our contribution to Debian, nor complicate our ability to work as a functioning downstream.
Early versions of debcraft will focus on compatibility with the existing format, and aim to help unify workflow across our Ubuntu Developer community.
> Debian starting to get second-hand packaging that goes to Ubuntu first, etc., even accidentally.
A notorious number of maintaining teams are the same for both distros and there hasn't been a problem I could think of.
> And takes some of the edge off of Ubuntu getting so much mileage out of Debian effort
And if you look on those teams' Debian QA pages you'll see that Sid isn't the upstream, this "mileage" has worked both ways for many years, for example Plasma 5 and 6 updates started in Unstable after they were deployed and ate most of the bugs in Ubuntu.
> I'll still continue to be all about Debian Stable
Which is the reason you probably don't know about the above since all of that work is to get updates into Testing.
Earlier this year, Canonical’s Ubuntu Engineering organisation gained a new team, seeded with some of our most prolific contributors to Ubuntu. Debcrafters is a new team dedicated to the maintenance of the Ubuntu Archive.
The team’s primary goal is to maintain the health of the Ubuntu Archive, but its unique construction aims to attract a broad range of Linux distribution expertise; contributors to distributions like Debian, Arch Linux, NixOS and others are encouraged to join the team, and will even get paid to contribute one day per week to those projects to foster learning and idea sharing
> > In the coming weeks our Starcraft team (responsible for Snapcraft 2, Rockcraft 5, Charmcraft 1) will begin prototyping debcraft, which will (in time) become the de facto method for creating, testing and uploading packages to the Ubuntu archive.
what's Debian's trademark on .deb , debian, and the release names? While I understand Debcrafters technically refers to the .deb format, to the uninitiated it sounds like a Debian project not an ubuntu one.
Debian branding is an important signal of quality. Ubuntu has always seemed like a lower quality product.
If you currently run `apt install debcraft` in Ubuntu, you will get the tool built by me. It has largely the same goals as Canonical has expressed in this and similar docs, but no Launchpad integration. If you want to collaborate on making .deb maintenance easier, faster and more secure across all of the Debian and Ubuntu ecosystems, please reach out. You can use the "book a chat" link on my site https://optimizedbyotto.com/.
Hopefully this makes things easier and simpler for users? Not being a Linux application developer or maintainer, I always wondered why we needed snaps, flatpaks, etc when we have .deb packages. I just like doing 'apt install something'. As a user, I prefer one central way to manage software and have the complexity automatically handled behind the scenes. It's great when things are open so I can dig into that stuff if I want to. But I shouldn't really need to.
Maybe this is more of a Debian question since a lot of Ubuntu packages come from Debian, but what process is used to deprecate unmaintained packages?
If a package is abandoned (i.e. there is no current maintainer), how is it determined if a package should be updated and maintained by Debcrafters or someone else?
Is there any kind of download metrics to know if a package is used?
If the package is in Ubuntu Main repository (https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-updates-releases-and-reposito...), it is maintained by Canonical engineers for LTS. Ubuntu Universe gets security fixes for up to 10 years as part of the Ubuntu Pro offering, which is where most of the upstream Debian packages are.
neilv|8 months ago
Hopefully this won't in any way adversely affect development and maintenance of packages for Debian.
Nobody wants embrace-extend-extinguish, nor poaching of volunteers, nor Debian starting to get second-hand packaging that goes to Ubuntu first, etc., even accidentally.
> The Debcrafters must spend the majority of their work time on Ubuntu, but they will be encouraged to spend a day per week contributing to other distributions to gain understanding, and bring fresh perspectives to Ubuntu (and the reverse, hopefully!). This will be structured as a literal day per week, agreed with the team management - for example “I work on NixOS on Tuesdays”.
That's a good open source company practice. And takes some of the edge off of Ubuntu getting so much mileage out of Debian effort, but making the brand all their commercial one.
I'll still continue to be all about Debian Stable, since it's actually been better for production use than Ubuntu has been for me.
jnsgruk|8 months ago
Early versions of debcraft will focus on compatibility with the existing format, and aim to help unify workflow across our Ubuntu Developer community.
chupasaurus|8 months ago
A notorious number of maintaining teams are the same for both distros and there hasn't been a problem I could think of.
> And takes some of the edge off of Ubuntu getting so much mileage out of Debian effort
And if you look on those teams' Debian QA pages you'll see that Sid isn't the upstream, this "mileage" has worked both ways for many years, for example Plasma 5 and 6 updates started in Unstable after they were deployed and ate most of the bugs in Ubuntu.
> I'll still continue to be all about Debian Stable
Which is the reason you probably don't know about the above since all of that work is to get updates into Testing.
TacticalCoder|8 months ago
[deleted]
mvdtnz|8 months ago
jnsgruk|8 months ago
The team’s primary goal is to maintain the health of the Ubuntu Archive, but its unique construction aims to attract a broad range of Linux distribution expertise; contributors to distributions like Debian, Arch Linux, NixOS and others are encouraged to join the team, and will even get paid to contribute one day per week to those projects to foster learning and idea sharing
loloquwowndueo|8 months ago
What are the requirements for joining? Will I be asked about my high-school grades? Pass a psychometric test?
Thanks.
rbanffy|8 months ago
notpushkin|8 months ago
Is it the same debcraft as the Debian one? https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debcraft
jnsgruk|8 months ago
Canonical’s debcraft will be a close relation of snapcraft, rockcraft and charmcraft, built using the craft-application and associated libraries.
AdmiralAsshat|8 months ago
Do they play Starcraft?
neogodless|8 months ago
Or is it a "star" team that works on their "craft" solutions?
tonymet|8 months ago
Debian branding is an important signal of quality. Ubuntu has always seemed like a lower quality product.
ottoke|8 months ago
jnsgruk|8 months ago
chrsw|8 months ago
alexktz|8 months ago
thesuperbigfrog|8 months ago
If a package is abandoned (i.e. there is no current maintainer), how is it determined if a package should be updated and maintained by Debcrafters or someone else?
Is there any kind of download metrics to know if a package is used?
How would package maintenance be prioritized?
raviksharma|8 months ago
If the package is in Ubuntu Main repository (https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-updates-releases-and-reposito...), it is maintained by Canonical engineers for LTS. Ubuntu Universe gets security fixes for up to 10 years as part of the Ubuntu Pro offering, which is where most of the upstream Debian packages are.
A package from Ubuntu can be removed using the following process, Anyone can file a request. https://canonical-ubuntu-project.readthedocs-hosted.com/stag... (note: the url will move to documentation.ubuntu.com domain)
Debian also has https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=openssl, but it does not mean that a package with very low popularity should be removed.
chupasaurus|8 months ago
[1] https://www.debian.org/devel/join/#contributing
[2] https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
nullbyte|8 months ago