[Ubuntu] The Future of UbuntuGIS

Tue May 12 18:44:41 EDT 2009

Hi,

See comments below..

Alex Mandel wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
That's a very good point. While i was writing the email, i forgot the 
LTS release. You are absolutly right, the LTS releases  have to be 
supported for.. 2 years (the time between 2 LTS versions) ? or fully (5 
years)? That needs to be decided.
> 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.
>
>   
Yes, if it is, we can.
> 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.
>
>   

Yes, some packages can be backported without any modification. In 
launchpad, we can do a "Copy existing binaries". But we have to be sure 
that the package is OK to do that. I would prefer to try it by myself on 
my dev machine, and re-upload it to launchpad in the appropriate series. 
If the package can be copied as it is.... that not very much effort to 
test it and re-upload it.

> Alex
>
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> Ubuntu at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu
>   

Thanks Alex!
Alan

-- 
Alan Boudreault
Mapgears
http://www.mapgears.com/ 