Debian Packages To Eliminate Vendor-Specific Patches, Affecting Downstreams Like Ubuntu

[michael louwe]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... ific-Patch - Debian Packages To Eliminate Vendor-Specific Patches, Affecting Downstreams Like Ubuntu - 13 Nov 2018

Is Debian now adopting anti-forking policies, like Google-Android.? I think so.

[xenopeek]

The existence of vendor-specific patches is new to me. To be frank, I find the concept ludicrous.

As I understand it:

1. Debian packages some software and puts the package in its repository;
2. Ubuntu imports that Debian package and repackages it for its own repository, but wants some Ubuntu specific changes;
3. Instead of applying those patches in the Ubuntu repository, they would apply the patches to the Debian package in the Debian repository and those patches would only take effect when unpacked on Ubuntu.
   (I don't know if any other derivatives made use of this.)

How was this maintenance nightmare even welcomed in the first place? It sounds like insanity.

This has nothing to do with anti-forking, how did you come to that conclusion? Debian has an extremely permissive policy for derivatives: https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines. It makes quite clear derivatives can (and should!) use Debian infrastructure but should, when they need to modify some source packages, add a second (their own) repository containing the source and binary packages for what the derivative distribution added or modified. (Side note: this is exactly how LMDE works.)

This is about putting maintenance effort and technical debt where it belongs and removing surprises (where depending on which distribution you're using, unpacking the same source package would lead to different result).

[rambo919]

I have to say I agree, there is no logic to allowing vendor patches to contaminate main repository packages. Admin nightmares waiting to happen.