[Ubuntu] The Future of UbuntuGIS

[Alex Mandel]

Alan Boudreault wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> 
> As you probably saw, I have accepted the role of despot of UbuntuGIS.
> This email is to inform you about what is UbuntuGIS and what my plans are.
> 
> 
> Main Goal
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> As most of you know, Debian and Ubuntu do not have up to date Open
> Source Geospatial packages. That is due to the cycle that the packages
> have to go through before being included in a specific
> release. Normally, Ubuntu packages are synchronized (if there is no
> Ubuntu maintainer) with the Debian unstable packages. A Debian package
> goes through the following cycle:
> 
>    experimental -> unstable -> testing -> stable
> 
> That's why the Debian stable distributions are known to be
> very stable :) . So, a new release of GDAL (i.e: 1.6.0) has to be in
> the experimental distribution before going into unstable... and before
> being synchronized in Ubuntu. You can understand that it's hard to stay
> "up to date" with the latest releases of upstream packages in this context.
> 
> The goal of the UbuntuGIS team is to provide an up to date Ubuntu PPA
> with a suite of the best Geospatial Open Source Software (specially
> those of OSGeo). PPA means "Personnal Package Archives" (a
> repository), a service of Launchpad. What this means for Ubuntu users
> is that simply by adding the UbuntuGIS repository corresponding to
> their distribution (in sources.list) they will automatically get
> access to the latest and greatest UbuntuGIS packages.
> 
> Why do I not plan to be a "real Ubuntu maintainer" ? By "real Ubuntu
> maintainer", I mean to be an official package maintainer and to have
> the responsibility to upload packages directly in the next Ubuntu
> release. The reason is simple: I don't see any benefit in doing
> this. The packages are already synchonized with DebianGIS (that does a
> really good job already). Here's two other consequences to not have a
> PPA:
> 
> - If a new version of a software (i.e GDAL) is released on May 1st. It's
>    too late: a new Ubuntu Distribution has been released in April. All users
>    will have to wait until October to get the new release of GDAL. (We could
>    add a backport, but that's another thing)
> 
> - If a new release of a given package is only included in new Ubuntu
>    releases then users who want that package would have to upgrade
>    their entire distribution to be sure that the package will work
>    properly.
> 
> 
> A benefit of using a PPA is that we will be able to build and publish
> packages for more than one distribution. So, users wont have to upgrade
> their distribution just to have the new software releases.
> 
> 
> Distribution and Software releases
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> My plan is to support one year of Ubuntu release. That is 3
> distributions. Currently, the task is to keep the packages up to date for
> the following 3 distributions:
> 
> - Hardy
> - Intrepid
> - Jaunty
> 
> As soon as the next Ubuntu release (Karmic) will be released, hardy
> packages will not be maintained anymore. Obviously, if it's not possible to
> update a package in a older release due to dependencies problems, it wont
> be.
> 
> 
> UbunguGIS PPAs
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> As you can see on the UbuntuGIS launchpad page:
> https://launchpad.net/~ubuntugis , I have created 3 PPAs:
> 
> ubuntugis-stable : I am not sure that this one will be used. The universe
>                     Ubuntu repository should already contain the "stable"
>                     packages.
> 
> ubuntugis-unstable : That one should contain all up to date packages.
> 
> ubuntugis-testing : This one will be used by maintainers for new
>                      package versions and tests.
> 
> 
> UbuntuGIS Requirements
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> - SVN repository: To share the packaging work between maitainers.
> 
> - BUG Tracker: Due to some limitations of launchpad, we can't create a bug
>                for a specific PPA/Team. We need a bug tracker to allow
>                users to report a bug about our packages and/or request a
>                package update.
> 
> UbuntuGIS Community Requirements
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> - testers
> - package maintainers
> - users  :)
> 
> 
> If you want/can help UbuntuGIS, let us know on the mailing list:
> 
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu
> 
> 
> For your information, my primary language is not English (if you
> haven't noticed yet :P). It's French. Don't hesitate to talk to me in
> French and/or correct me if what I wrote is not clear or is totally
> wrong. I will be glad to improve my English.
> 
> 
> All thoughts and opinions are welcome!
> 
> Best Regards,
> Alan
> 

Overall, great plan. My only concern is the plan to drop support for
Hardy when Karmic comes out. Hardy is an LTS(Long term support) release
and for GIS libraries like GDAL, GEOS and server tools like mapserver
this could be important. LTS servers would be expected to only change
for new versions of LTS which I understand to be every 2 years. Of
course that would mean 4 versions to keep up on unless we dropped
Intrepid in 6 months.

We also need to contemplate building on the great work of
deb http://les-ejk.cz/ubuntu/ hardy multiverse
who seems to always be one step ahead of everyone else.

I'll also note, that I found the debs for GEOS, PROJ, SQLite
"Backportable" from Jaunty to Intrepid and Hardy without modification,
aside from a warning about Ubuntu version. This concerns work on
Spatialite which requires those 3 to be fairly new even to work.

Alex