[Hamara-devel] Notes from the Debian Derivatives BoF held at DebConf 2018 Taiwan

[rajudev]

Agenda
======
* census
* installers
* up streaming applications
* Invitations to Derivative distributions for attending DebConf's

Attendees from
--------------

Ubuntu
Hamara Linux
LiMux
Tails
SteamOS
PureOS
Deepin
TurnKey
Meilix
Tanglu
Blends
Debian

Topics
------

* Derivatives census needs help:
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusQA
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Integration

Installers
----------
* derivatives tend to have an easier to use installer
* Tanglu: reasons for not using d-i
  - faster installer via dumping filesystem to disk
  - switched to Calamares cross-distro installer https://calamares.io
  - Installer does not need to be rebuilt when kernel ABI changes
  - More user-friendly, esp. improved partitioning wizard
* Hamara:
  - were using d-i and contributing fixes
  - switched to Calamares
* Debian:
  - live images contain Calamares now (as an experiment)
  - would be great to hear feedback about experiments from derivatives
  - both successes and failures, linked from the census fields
* Ubuntu: Ubiquity, d-i, subiquity
* BlankOn Installer:
  - blankon.id
    https://github.com/BlankOn/blankon-installer
  - custom with HTML5
* Deepin:
  - deepin-installer-reborn (customized frontend of d-i)
  - deepin-windows-installer (fork of wubi)
* SteamOS: d-i, planned to be streamlined

* PureOS: using Calamares profiles
* LiMux: FAI

Upstreaming applications
------------------------

* Tails: upstreamed openpgp-applet (and tails-installer  )
* Kali: GSoC project upstreaming new packages
* Deepin: DDE upstreaming work in progress (dtk widgets done,
applications still in early age)

Mirror and package build tools
------------------------
* Tanglu:
  tried jenkins (failure)
  reprepro -> switched to DAK
  Now:
   - archive: DAK
   - build, sync, transition, test, etc.: Laniakea (sbuild) =>
https://lkorigin.github.io/
   - images: live-build, [vmdebootstrap]
* PureOS: dak, Laniakea, live-build (does not rebuild all packages)
* Deepin: reprepro (Often needs to rebuild Qt packages due to versioning
issues)
* LiMux: sbuild, switched from DAK to reprepro + apt-repos
(github.com://lhm-limux/apt-repos)
* Hamara: build tools: live-build .  Repository: reprepro Package
builds: gitlab CI
* Meilix: Heroku, deploy website to github pages, deploy a backend to
Heroku, build distro with Travis and make a release on Github for the distro
* SteamOS: moving to an overlay, possibly using reprepro pulls, bleeding
edge toolchain. builds with OBS
* Biolinux: installing stuff into /usr/local, agreed to switch to
packaging within Debian plus metapackages
* Rebuilding all packages: due to toolchain changes and compiler flags
(hardening etc)

Rebuilding arch all
-----------------
* Ubuntu: very manual rebuilding
* Tanglu: had an automatic mechanism for package rebuilds (involved
"hacking" source pkg changelogs)
* Deepin: Manual rebuilding for private archs that are not allowed to be
upstreamed
* SteamOS: automatically bump version using dch to add to changelog

DebConf derivatives funding
---------------------------
* Would be nice to have funding for people who haven't attended before
and are from derivatives
* Special funding wouldn't be needed if they give talks
* DebConf invitations haven't been sent this year

The "usual" Requests
--------------------
Since 2010 we meet every DebConf and imho the following things would greatly
improve Derivative handling/minimize diffs. However, nobody ever has time to
work on them:
* dpkg conffile divertions
* "pushing" for conf.d globally
* "pushing" for update-alternative
* "pushing" for dpkg-statoverride in maintainerscripts
* integrating config-management in dpkg
* split out artwork packages
* no empty directories in source packages (for building directly out of git)


Best Practice
-------------
* Keep differences to debian to a minimum
* Send feedback (good/bad) about experiments to Debian
* see wiki.d.o, there's a good list to start with
  https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines
  https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends
* Please subscribe to derivatives mailing-list
debian-derivatives at lists.debian.org


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