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• Launchpad Entry: hardy-reducing-duplication

• Packages affected: all

Summary

Hardy Heron will be an LTS release again, and thus we should spend some extra efforts to get rid of duplication to make maintenance as easy as possible and avoid CD space waste.

We identify lists of duplicated libraries (such as libdb4.[23456]) and outline the steps to eliminate them. We also present discussion results about applications which have a similar purpose (such as f-spot, gthumb, and eog) and thus both create unnecessary maintenance overhead and don't conform with our "ship one default application for one purpose" philosophy.

Release Note

TODO: explain dropped applications and their replacement, if applicable.

Rationale

This should cover the _why_: why is this change being proposed, what justifies it, where we see this justified.

Use Cases

Assumptions

Design

You can have subsections that better describe specific parts of the issue.

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Include:

• data migration, if any
• redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
• how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during CD testing, and to show off after release.

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Outstanding Issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.

BoF agenda and discussion

Find out candidates for duplicated libraries:

grep "^Package: " /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_gutsy_main_binary-*_Packages | awk '{print $2}' | grep -v '[^0-9]32[^0-9]' | sed -e "s/c2//; s/c102//; s/[-0-9.]//g" | sort | uniq -d | less

These look like good targets which should be discussed:

• {cpp,gcc}-{3.3,3.4,4.1,4.2}
• db4.{2,3,4,5,6}
• libgksu{1.2,2}
• libgtkhtml{2,3.8,3.14}
• libgtksourceview{1.0,2.0}
• libmono-*{1.0,2.0}-cil
• libneon{25,26,27}
• libnet{0,1,6}
• sqlite{0,3}
• libctdc++{5,6-4.1,6-4.2}
• liwv{,2}
• python2.{4,5}
• t{cl,k}8.{3,4}

These targets are worthwhile, but low-priority and shouldn't waste a lot of efforts:

• autoconf{,2.13}
• automake{,1.4,1.7,1.8,1.9} (automake is 1.10)

Applications:

• F-Spot/eog/gthumb
• Rhythmbox/sound-juicer/serpentine (? discuss with Gnome desktop team)
• updatedb/tracker

CategorySpec