Debian Packages To Eliminate Vendor-Specific Patches, Affecting Downstreams Like Ubuntu

[Spring]

Can't see why installer could not be screaming that it's installing vendor-specific version and allowing to select any of them.

[ipsirc]

Debian freeze is approaching. Does anyone know if Debian kernel maintainers plan to upload anything newer than 4.18.x?

They've already done that: https://packages.debian.org/experime...19.0-rc7-amd64

[bregma]

What the commenters here seem to be mising is thath there are only a handful of package in Ubuntu that use this vendor-specific patching business. The vast majority of packages in Ubuntu are either pulled directly unmolested from Debian or else repackaged in Ubuntu with a Ubuntu patchset. Converting that handful of source packages from a rare and obscure patch-tracking method to the common, more expected, method is a small effort.

For the other commenter who don't understand the difference between software sources and binary installation packages: software is built from source code that gets processed into the binaries you click on and install. Although with some software you can appear to "run" the source code (in that you're really just feeding instructions into a program that reads and executes them), there are many kinds of software that require a translation step from the human-readable source code into the machine-executable binary instructions. The "patches" in question are changes the the original source codes, not the binary machine instructions in your deb. Those changes may be bug fixes, changes to accommodate different environments (system startup, file paths, screen placement of controls) or perhaps enabling or disabling features due to legal issues (patents, copyrights, export restrictions).

It's true it would be nice if there was only one 'teh linux' (just like only one kind of car part, for all cars, or one kind of employee that can be hired and fired at will for all jobs) but instead we have freedom of choice, and patching software is one way that manifests.

[Vistaus]

They've already done that: https://packages.debian.org/experime...19.0-rc7-amd64

You missed half of his post. He was talking about the upcoming freeze. I've never seen Experimental in a freeze (that would be weird!).

[srakitnican]

Whilst I kinda agree, Linux is a little bit messier than that. For example some distros store things in a different prefix such as /usr/local rather than /usr.
Also, I don't know how this will affect Debian GNU/kfreebsd but FreeBSD stores software in /usr/local.

Well according to Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, `/usr/local` is not a place for distro packages.

[Djhg2000]

So to summarize; it only affects the source packages, very few packages are affected by the change, both Debian and Ubuntu developers agree that the feature was poorly implemented and it has mostly just been abused for stuff that should've been in regular patches anyway.