Importing Ubuntu into bzr

[James Westby]

Hi all,

I wanted to update the list on the proposal that I have been writing
for the last couple of months (with code, but I think that's less
interesting as the idea is pretty simple).

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributedDevelopment/ImporterSpecification

It's a proposal to import all of Ubuntu in to branches of bzr, and
then make these available for Ubuntu developers to work with. This
brings a couple of things. Obviously we get the power of a VCS
to do the work, which I don't think that anyone on this list needs
convincing of.

However, we also get consistency. You know you'll be able to get
a branch of any package, and you know what you get when you
grab that branch (rather than having to worry about whether it's
debian/ only or not, you still have to work out which patch
system it is, etc.).

There's been a long desire to have this, but the past approaches
weren't getting anywhere fast. This does ignore existing branches,
and VCS that may be being used in Debian or upstream, but treating
everything the same for now allows us to get somewhere. It is in no way
the aim to go out on our own for ever, we are just using it as a
slingshot to get started.

I don't think that it conflicts with anything that vcs-pkg is trying
to achieve, and I will be working to incorporate things from this list,
both the ideas and the tools.

I'm happy to talk to anyone about specifics, or about ways in which
we can work with people outside of Ubuntu better on this, so just get
in touch any time.

Thanks,

James