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Home > Archive > Debian Developers > July 2004 > forking source: dcc
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forking source: dcc
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| Dan Weber 2004-07-16, 5:54 pm |
| I am currently working as a team on packaging dcc, a checksum system for
spam. We have been through some major issues with upstream, first that
upstream refuses patches, and is ignorant. Generally, upstream is
incooperable, the build system is broken, and we couldn't fix it without
a complete rewrite of it. Since all of these problems need attention,
is it fair that we could fork dcc for debian?
Dan Weber
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| Santiago Vila 2004-07-16, 5:54 pm |
| On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Dan Weber wrote:
> I am currently working as a team on packaging dcc, a checksum system for
> spam. We have been through some major issues with upstream, first that
> upstream refuses patches, and is ignorant.
A little bit stubborn, for certain issues, maybe, but I would not call
him ignorant. I usually find his posts to news.admin.net-abuse.email
quite interesting indeed.
> Generally, upstream is incooperable, the build system is broken, and
> we couldn't fix it without a complete rewrite of it. Since all of
> these problems need attention, is it fair that we could fork dcc for
> debian?
Some weeks ago I managed to build DCC (sort-of) without completely
rewriting it, based on the previous debianization from Bas Zoetekouw,
but I did not find time to test it extensively.
So, for this case, I don't see the need to fork, but maybe there are
issues I'm missing.
Anyway, what's a "fork", exactly? Isn't a Debian package in which the .diff
is very big some kind of "fork"? I think you can make the .diff as big
as you need while keeping the .orig.tar.gz untouched.
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| Russell Coker 2004-07-16, 5:54 pm |
| On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 04:54, Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> wrote:
> Anyway, what's a "fork", exactly? Isn't a Debian package in which the .diff
> is very big some kind of "fork"? I think you can make the .diff as big
> as you need while keeping the .orig.tar.gz untouched.
The general idea with a .diff for Debian is that it contains two types of
patches. There's things that will get merged upstream if possible (IE new
features developed by Debian people), and there's Debian specific changes (IE
Debian uses different directories than the ones that upstream likes).
If there are patches that don't fall into those categories (EG re-writing of
sub-systems in a way that upstream doesn't like) then the package is forked
in all practical ways.
If you change the name of the package and declare it as a different package
then it's a real fork. Bonnie++ was a real fork of Bonnie. Debian's PAM is
practically a fork of the upstream PAM.
--
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
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| Martin Michlmayr 2004-07-16, 5:54 pm |
| * Dan Weber <dan@mirrorlynx.com> [2004-07-16 13:58]:
> Since all of these problems need attention, is it fair that we could
> fork dcc for debian?
No, if you want to fork a program, do it outside of Debian and package
the fork.
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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| Russell Coker 2004-07-16, 8:50 pm |
| On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:15, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:
> * Dan Weber <dan@mirrorlynx.com> [2004-07-16 13:58]:
>
> No, if you want to fork a program, do it outside of Debian and package
> the fork.
What is the difference?
A DD may choose to use Debian as the primary distribution point for the source
of a program that they are developing. If that program is a fork of someone
else's program then it's a Debian fork.
Programs which are forked in Debian include PAM, cron, and sysvinit is coming
close. I think it would be better for everyone if we just acknowledged
what's happened and call these Debian forks.
--
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
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| Martin Michlmayr 2004-07-17, 7:50 am |
| * Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> [2004-07-17 12:21]:
>
> What is the difference?
>
> A DD may choose to use Debian as the primary distribution point for
> the source of a program that they are developing.
Oh, sure. What I meant was that a different name should be taken for
the package than what upstream uses. I don't think you should put
"dcc" with that name in Debian when the intention is to fork from the
original dcc. If this was the case, people might hear about the dcc
tool, then see that "dcc" is in Debian, start using it and realize
that it's not the dcc they wanted after all.
> Programs which are forked in Debian include PAM, cron, and sysvinit
> is coming close. I think it would be better for everyone if we just
> acknowledged what's happened and call these Debian forks.
Sure, I agree, but there is a large difference between a program
deviating from upstream over time and someone clearly starting with
the intentions of creating a fork.
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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| Russell Coker 2004-07-17, 7:50 am |
| On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 22:28, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:
>
> Oh, sure. What I meant was that a different name should be taken for
> the package than what upstream uses. I don't think you should put
> "dcc" with that name in Debian when the intention is to fork from the
> original dcc. If this was the case, people might hear about the dcc
> tool, then see that "dcc" is in Debian, start using it and realize
> that it's not the dcc they wanted after all.
In that case we should rename cron. Paul Vixie has not contributed any code
to it for a long time AFAIK. We should also start incrementing the program
version number (83 Debian revisions should justify at least a version 3.1).
I think that the least confusing thing to do might be to rename cron as the
Greenland cron and refer to it as a derivative of Vixie cron.
Steve, I hope you don't mind me using you as an example. I think that what
you have done is a good example of how to maintain a project without an
upstream developer.
>
> Sure, I agree, but there is a large difference between a program
> deviating from upstream over time and someone clearly starting with
> the intentions of creating a fork.
Every time I've forked a program I have not had any intentions to do so. I've
just deviated from upstream and had them not be responsive to patches, not
appear to exist, or directly reject my patches.
My observation suggests that this is common. I don't recall an example of
someone saying "I'm going to fork this project" and ever doing anything
serious, in such cases I don't even expect to see any code released.
--
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
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| Martin Michlmayr 2004-07-17, 5:53 pm |
| * Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> [2004-07-17 23:34]:
> Every time I've forked a program I have not had any intentions to do
> so. I've just deviated from upstream and had them not be responsive
> to patches, not appear to exist, or directly reject my patches.
Dan said explictly that he was going to fork dcc, and this with the
package not being in Debian yet. This is certainly different where
you put something in the archive and over time deviate from upstream.
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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| Steve Greenland 2004-07-17, 5:53 pm |
| On 17-Jul-04, 08:34 (CDT), Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 22:28, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:
> In that case we should rename cron. Paul Vixie has not contributed any code
> to it for a long time AFAIK. We should also start incrementing the program
> version number (83 Debian revisions should justify at least a version 3.1).
>
> I think that the least confusing thing to do might be to rename cron as the
> Greenland cron and refer to it as a derivative of Vixie cron.
>
> Steve, I hope you don't mind me using you as an example. I think that what
> you have done is a good example of how to maintain a project without an
> upstream developer.
Without in any way objecting to the point you're making or general
position you're taking (which I agree with), I'm not sure you'd call my
maintainership of cron a "good example". Adequate, perhaps.
To be fair to Paul, he has expressed willingness to accept patches from
me, and I've not had/taken the time to separate and prepare the patches.
Hmmm, I went to look and see that there is now actually a cron 4.1 that
appears (based on the very brief changelog) to include some of the
generic fixes that the BSD folks did (and which have been merged with
the Debian version). I guess I need to look at 4.1 and see what it would
take to make it look like our version was based on it rather than 3.1.
And actually, cron is not something that should have such a big Debian
specific drift. What *should* have happened is that when the various
Linux and BSD distributions saw that Paul, being much more involved
with BIND and ISC business issues, was not going to have time to keep
upstream cron up-to-date, was develop our own central "upstream" work,
with actual distribution specific patches kept locally. But we didn't.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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