PPUopencpn

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In other words, the worst with Ubuntu (in the context of this application) is the broken packaging process which leads to opencpn packages too old to be usable. And my plan is to fix that...

PPU upload rights for the opencpn package application

I'm applying for PPU upload rights for the OpenCPN package.

The application was proposed by Dan Streetman as part of my last backport review [1].

Background

I have been packaging in Debian for some years, notably the lirc and the opencpn package including some dependencies. These packages has trickled down to Ubuntu, and for that reason I have had some interactions with the Ubuntu community. That said, the bulk of my work has been in Debian.

My plans

This application is focused on the opencpn package. Since the normal flow comes from Debian which I also maintain, I only need the permissions to do backports. Theoretically one could of course also make an SRU, but in this unlikely case I will certainly discuss with others before taking any actions.

From a more overall perspective this work is about creating trust in the official packaging. OpenCPN is mostly used through the PPA [5], despite that this package does not meet basic packaging standards. One reason is that the version available in the LTS releases supported tend to be too old to be usable. This means that upstream does not really trust the official packaging process to be fast enough. My goal is thus to create trust in the official packaging process for both users and upstream community.

In other words, the worst with Ubuntu (in the context of this application) is the broken packaging process which leads to opencpn packages too old to be usable. And my plan is to fix that...

Technical knowledge

The opencpn package in it's current form is my doing. I did the work to re-introduce to Debian which meant I had to more or less rewrite the packaging from scratch to meet modern standards. This was no minor task, and I learnt a lot. The packaging sources ara available at gitlab [2] which keeps various branches for Debian and the Ubuntu Focal backport.

Unfortunately, I do this on my own for various reasons. However, this is not typical, other packages like dependencies are maintained in salsa teams like the Multimedia Team (wxsvg).

Contrary to seasoned Debian packagers I actually do mistakes (sigh). For that reason my plan is to not upload anything to Ubuntu which not has been reviewed at the Debian side. Yes, there are differences, but it should still make things more safe.

If there are reviewers available on the Ubuntu side I would of course appreciate this. Four eyes sees more than two, for sure.

Since I'm also active in the upstream I know the sources and the upstream community. This should make it possible for me to handle bugs in a good way.

Interacting with others

The last example is the sponsored backport [1]. The review here hopefully shows that I can work with others. Another example is the Debian review of 5.6.0 [4]

On a sidenote I'm sort of fond of reviews. It's a good form to discuss things.

I have a lot of interactions with others in the OpenCPN upstream project [3]. Just browsing the bugs there should reveal a lot of interactions.

The need for PPU permission

It seems that the very few sponsors I have had on the Ubuntu side are unavailable. I can of course just assign my bugs to ubuntu-sponsors, but this introduces random delays and uncertainty which defeats my overall goal to create upstream and user trust in the packaging process.

Also, the thought that those on the ubuntu-sponsors list has other things to do has occurred to me.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/opencpn/+bug/1956004

[2] https://gitlab.com/leamas/opencpn/

[3] https://github.com/OpenCPN/OpenCPN

[4] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1001494

[5] https://launchpad.net/~bdbcat/+archive/ubuntu/opencpn/

AlecLeamas/PPUopencpn (last edited 2022-01-19 11:03:12 by leamas-alec)