Canonical Plans a Version-Tracking Tool for Devs

daria42 writes "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has started work on a new project which aims to make easier for Linux developers to find the latest open source software updates, no matter which distribution they are contributing to. The effort encompasses distributed bug tracking, revision control, language translations and more. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to take advantage of the software, saying: 'As the framework [for using code from across the community] sets, hopefully we are at the centre of it. Further down the pipeline we may need to differentiate on other grounds.'"

Comments

Launchpad

[natrius]

The summary gives the impression that Launchpad development just started, but it's been around for a few months at least. Bug reports from the unsupported packages in Ubuntu's latest release go to Malone, which is a part of Launchpad. Also, I think people have been using Rosetta to do translations for Hoary as well. It looks promising.

Before you ask, Launchpad isn't open source. Yet.

Nifty.

[millennial]

Now if they make a similar project for the average end user that has the simplicity of Gentoo's emerge system, but is cross-platform, I'm sold.

Re:This doesn't really fix the problem.

[natrius]

Eventually, this will be just as usefull as CVS/Subversioni is right now for open source projects on different distributions.

That's because CVS and Subversion are centralized versioning systems. Bazaar and other Arch-like systems aren't. The way things are right now, bug tracking systems and code versioning systems are completely separate. If you can integrate a bug tracking system with something like Arch and retain the distributed nature of it all, then it will definitely be useful for multiple distributions. It's all patches. I think this is the direction they're trying to take things.

CVS and Subversion are centralised

[AnEmbodiedMind]

CVS and Subversion are centralised in that there is a central repository.

Systems such as ARCH allow a virtual repository that is fragmented across multiple servers - some of which might be official, and some might not.

This lets you branch from a project, but still remain in sync with it, and more importantly do so without permission or help from the official repository.

There is a lot more to it too.

difference between need and CVS, etc...

[mabhatter654]

The reason Bitkeeper was choosen over all the others is that it allowed a developer to keep their own private version and others to share specific parts... which is the opposite of nearly every other source management system. Every other system seeks to have one "golden" version with developers contributing only to that... think corperate style software, always working toward some "release". Bitkeeper was the only one to allow individuals to keep their "pet" projects, but still share all the changes amongst themselves... i.e you could have Linus' version, Alan Cox version, etc... they can all "borrow back" from eachother, but don't Have to. it's percisely the opposite philosophy of every other source control system to conform everybody to "the way".

CVS was a good start, and Gentoo takes the next step, but they all require somebody to be "developer in the middle" for every single configuration decision. Debian is very cool in that it seeks to always provide a "foundation" to build on, but it's much too slow advancing [updating the foundation] for "internet" usage. I've thought it was time for a while now to develop the "next" system... which I could gaurantee is unique to OSS and nobody else. Gentoo's ebuild is great, but it doesn't go back to the developer/ outside of gentoo. Think about this a minute... if Gentoo is source only, then it should be simple to make a ebuild for any other distro too... but "it's not that easy" you say... I'd ask WHY?

Ideally, every person who compiles should be able to submit their results "upstream" as well as "downstream" that's the current distro problem we face now. Every distro fixes things differently, but the original author can't keep up with all the changes coming from a dozen distros... so they all stay "fragmented". The "next" system should fix bugs once... and be able to relay the issues back to the guy who maintains that particular piece of source code. Gentoo comes close, but it can't "put back" and suggest changes and test cases to the original developer... That's the step that's slowing down development all around. It's the need for things like drivers and kernel modules to fix third- and fourth- levels of interaction... the best testing environment is the "real world" because there are far more combinations of programs out there than any one developer could ever hope to test... The ability to guess where a bug might be by looking at logs from ALL the compiled versions... and see what's breaking stuff... to reduce the reliance on "custom" distros, you need a sytem that can spot bugs that happen once per thousand or even ten-thousand users... The other advantage is that proprietary developers would be able to tap the same up-to-date pool for their projects... so they wouldn't be pertually "out of the loop" dragging things down!!

A File System for Linux

[LinuxSneaker]

With all of the fallout with BitKeeper and the need for a Version Control System, has anyone looked at a new filesystem with would natively support this? Not only would software development be great with it, but back-ups would be a breeze.
Could name it VCFS (Version Control File System)...has anyone used those letters before (amid the NTFS, NFS, SMB, VFAT file systems)?

It's already been done

[Gilesx]

Why exactly are Ubuntu attempting to recreate the wheel here?

This has already been done by Specifix / Foresight Linux (www.foresightlinux.com)

These distros use a system called Conary, developed in part by the guy behind RPM, and the idea of Conary is to offer distro independent management.

Troves can be shadowed between distros, so you can create a distro easily by shadowing a "parent" distro and picking and choosing your updates.

It stores source code and changesets, so all you Gentoo ricers can do an emerge from conary, and the rest of us sane people can just pull up the changesets that give the system instructions on what to change to install package "xyz". The other beauty of changesets is that it gives a degree of distro neutrality.

Bizarre that Ubuntu want to reinvent the wheel rather than contributing to something that already exists.