future of Debian's derivatives efforts?

[Paul Wise]

Hi all,

Recently we had a discussion on debian-project about the value and
future of Debian's derivatives efforts.

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/***@debian.org

My interpretation of the discussion is that there is some value to
Debian's derivatives efforts but that there are few folks from Debian
who are both interested in the project and have time to contribute.

The discussion also pointed towards derivatives as a possible source of
contributors. I think that makes sense, both as a way for derivatives
folks to contribute to Debian and as a way for derivatives to raise
interest in derivatives within Debian.

Raju Devidas (libregeekingkid) of Hamara Linux has starting helping out
(with census invites) and expressed interest in working on the project.

Does anyone else want to help out with Debian's derivatives efforts?

Any other thoughts about Debian & derivatives?

PS: today at DebCamp I've given Raju an overview of the census scripts.
I'll be happy to give the same overview to anyone else at DebCamp.
We will be working on the most pressing tasks in the next few days
but there is lots more work to be done for interested volunteers.

* migrating the git repository to salsa.debian.org
* migrating from the mailing list to mailing folks directly
* adding support for expiring files from the source archive

[Daniil Baturin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Hi Paul,

At VyOS, we (ok, at least I -- won't speak for all maintainers ;) would
be happy to both unify the packages we build ourselves with Debian and
contribute our own packages (e.g. ipaddrcheck and hvinfo) to Debian.
It's just that I have to admit that the contribution process is still
rather intimidating.

We hardly have resources to contribute to the Census infrastructure
right now though.

Hi all, > > Recently we had a discussion on debian-project about the value and
future of Debian's derivatives efforts. > ...
The discussion also pointed towards derivatives as a possible source of > contributors. I think that makes sense, both as a way for derivatives
folks to contribute to Debian and as a way for derivatives to raise >

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[Israel]

Post by Daniil Baturin
Hi Paul,
At VyOS, we (ok, at least I -- won't speak for all maintainers ;) would
be happy to both unify the packages we build ourselves with Debian and
contribute our own packages (e.g. ipaddrcheck and hvinfo) to Debian.
It's just that I have to admit that the contribution process is still
rather intimidating.
We hardly have resources to contribute to the Census infrastructure
right now though.

Hi all,
I would like to echo this sentiment.  I would very much like to be
involved in a deeper level with the core of Debian.  It would make life
much easier if the derivatives were given some sort of streamlined path
to Debian "citizenship" so that we could get our work mainlined in
Debian, and perhaps benefit all the other derivatives, through
cooperation.... some of us have very similar goals (the ToriOS project
focuses on: small, fast, light, simple).

If we could be more easily included in Debian, the need for a specific
derivatives team, might be less useful, since we could all be part of
Debian.

[Daniil Baturin]

Hi Israel and everyone,

I think everyone would benefit from a degree of unification of packaging
standards and processes between the derivatives and Debian itself.
While the standards are fairly well documented, the processes is still a
mystery to me, for example.

Hi all, > I would like to echo this sentiment. I would very much like to be

involved in a deeper level with the core of Debian. It would make life
much easier if the derivatives were given some sort of streamlined path
to Debian "citizenship" so that we could get our work mainlined in
Debian, and perhaps benefit all the other derivatives, through
cooperation.... some of us have very similar goals (the ToriOS project
focuses on: small, fast, light, simple). > > If we could be more easily
included in Debian, the need for a specific derivatives team, might be
less useful, since we could all be part of Debian. >

[John Crawley]

Post by Daniil Baturin
I think everyone would benefit from a degree of unification of packaging
standards and processes between the derivatives and Debian itself.
While the standards are fairly well documented, the processes is still a
mystery to me, for example.

Hi all,
speaking as one of the BunsenLabs[1] developers I can say that our
packages are intended to follow Debian standards as closely as possible,
with the idea that at some (distant?) time in the future they might be
available from Debian itself.

I don't see what further packaging standard "unification" is possible,
other than that derivatives' packages follow Debian. As to the
procedures, I was thinking that some day if one of our packages looked
useful to debian users in general, I might try to find a sponsor for it...

Is there anything else that Debian could do to make it easier for
derivatives to contribute? I personally don't see that being a
derivative per se is sufficient reason for Debian to relax its standards
for packages from that source. I've never tried this, but would have
thought that if the stuff is OK then there's a way in. No?

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census/BunsenLabs

[John Crawley]

Post by John Crawley
Is there anything else that Debian could do to make it easier for
derivatives to contribute? I personally don't see that being a
derivative per se is sufficient reason for Debian to relax its standards
for packages from that source.

I could have thought a bit more about that, and agreed that while the
procedures are laid out, and can eventually be discovered from various
web pages, it's not so clear and obvious. (I still think that the
package standards themselves are OK though.)

Perhaps there is some scope for Debian to make things easier for
potential new contributors, and in particular, maybe a page with
specific advice for derivative developers would be welcome.

[Zlatan Todoric]

Post by John Crawley

Post by John Crawley
Is there anything else that Debian could do to make it easier for
derivatives to contribute? I personally don't see that being a
derivative per se is sufficient reason for Debian to relax its
standards for packages from that source.

I could have thought a bit more about that, and agreed that while the
procedures are laid out, and can eventually be discovered from various
web pages, it's not so clear and obvious. (I still think that the
package standards themselves are OK though.)
Perhaps there is some scope for Debian to make things easier for
potential new contributors, and in particular, maybe a page with
specific advice for derivative developers would be welcome.

Just a thought: maybe clearly marked section on debian.org with Debian
Derivatives and forming a Debian Derivatives Team that will have Debian
Developers (those interested into this work being done directly in
Debian if it fits) and developers from derivatives (that can also happen
to be Debian Developers but it is not required for this team) so things
can be coordinated together and set proper and more straightforward
policies (aka agreeing on easiest and most efficient way while not
downplaying the quality of work itself). Something like mentors but just
for derivatives.

Z

[Raju Devidas]

Inline

Hi all, Recently we had a discussion on debian-project about the value
and future of Debian's derivatives efforts.
My interpretation of the discussion is that there is some value to
Debian's derivatives efforts but that there are few folks from Debian
who are both interested in the project and have time to contribute.

There is for sure some/much value, many of the derivatives are are
trying to solve there own use cases, be it with Region or Language or
Domain of application.
This helps the derivatives better collaborate with Debian and with each
other as well.

The discussion also pointed towards derivatives as a possible source
of contributors. I think that makes sense, both as a way for
derivatives folks to contribute to Debian and as a way for derivatives
to raise interest in derivatives within Debian.

As per my observations, many of the derivatives are having the Debian
Contributors/Developers contributing to them.
So it helps both the derivatives and Debian as well.
The derivative contributors also help upstream patches/applications
which are then helpful for other Debian/Derivative users

Raju Devidas (libregeekingkid) of Hamara Linux has starting helping
out (with census invites) and expressed interest in working on the
project. Does anyone else want to help out with Debian's derivatives
efforts? Any other thoughts about Debian & derivatives?

Derivatives should try to collaborate with each other on this list along
with there own lists.
This will help solve problems quickly as the most of the derivatives
will run into similar issues over time.
I still have a few issues which I posted on the derivatives mailing list
a while back, with no sufficient response.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives/2018/01/msg00007.html

for now we have fixed the issue with our own custom script.

PS: today at DebCamp I've given Raju an overview of the census
scripts. I'll be happy to give the same overview to anyone else at
DebCamp. We will be working on the most pressing tasks in the next few
days but there is lots more work to be done for interested volunteers.
* migrating the git repository to salsa.debian.org * migrating from
the mailing list to mailing folks directly * adding support for
expiring files from the source archive

[John Crawley]

Post by Raju Devidas
Derivatives should try to collaborate with each other on this list along
with there own lists.
This will help solve problems quickly as the most of the derivatives
will run into similar issues over time.

Agreed!

[adrian15]

Post by Paul Wise
Hi all,
Recently we had a discussion on debian-project about the value and
future of Debian's derivatives efforts.
(...)
Any other thoughts about Debian & derivatives?

What about having an equivalent to launchpad package repositories but
only for derivatives.

These repo packages can be automatically checked against strict Debian
policies (on how to write a good package).

You can have your derivative packages in this repo even if Debian
policies are not met (I mean, if DFSG is not met, probably does not need
to be there). Even if lintian gives a lot of warnings but it builds you
can have them there.

Why? Because we don't want to avoid beginners but to encourage them.

This is not official Debian because we don't want people to think that
Debian supports any of these derivatives hence we use the debian.net domain.




However if some of the packages are checked as '100% PERFECT' by the bot
then it's easier for a DD to sponsor the new maintainer / new package
because its packages have some sort of seal of being good enough.



derivatives.repo.debian.net


Maybe using Open Build Service for the server side.


Well, this is a quick thought.


adrian15

[John Crawley]

Post by adrian15
What about having an equivalent to launchpad package repositories but
only for derivatives.

With some people thinking about alternatives to github, this might be a
timely suggestion.