[SAC] Motion: Provide SVN and Trac services to the UbuntuGIS project

[Daniel Morissette]

Martin Spott wrote:
> 
> Well, as I understand, they're not even providing packages, like
> DebianGis does, they're just about maintaining the 'debian' package
> config directory.
> 

Wrong. UbuntuGIS is *NOT* only about maintaining the debian package 
config, the project is mostly about maintaining a package archive on 
Launchpad with up to date binary packages for the last three releases of 
Ubuntu.

I'm no Debian/Ubuntu packaging expert, but my understanding is that to 
provide binary packages, one has to maintain different versions of the 
config files for each target distribution... hence the need for an SVN.


> Look, nowadays a lot of OpenSource projects ship the most up-to-date
> 'debian' package configuration together with their source code
> (analogously to shipping project files for the MacOS- or Windows-
> development environments). 

Really? I'll defer to those in the know about this one, but I for one 
know that MapServer and GDAL don't do that yet...


> My personal idea of "doing things right"
> would be to negotiate with the "real/true" debian folks as well as with
> the respective OSGeo projects and have this very 'debian' package
> config directory set up in a way that works for both and to ship it
> with the source.
> 

Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, so until this ideal is 
achieved even the "real" debian folks have to manage the config files in 
their own source repository for several practical reasons... at least 
that's my understanding of the way they work.

I guess I should also add that Alan who just accepted the lead of the 
UnbuntuGIS project has also been contributor to the "real" DebianGIS 
project for a little while, and everything he does for UbuntuGIS is 
eventually retrofitted into DebianGIS for a later release... nobody is 
trying to steal pride away from anyone, just doing our best in an 
imperfect world.


> To my opinion the current procedure has a slight taste of "doing things
> different for no obvious reason, just as an end in itself" - taking the
> pride ("we're the only ones to provide up-to-date packages") but still
> delivering just a half-hearted solution. I find this a bit misleading -
> and therefore I personally would prefer not to do it this way.
> 

Ouch! That shows lots of respect for the hard work of volunteers working 
for the same cause as you...

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/