[Beowulf] A press release

[Tim Cutts]

On 2 Jul 2008, at 12:16 pm, Jon Aquilina wrote:

> one thing must not be forgotten though. in regards to pkging stuff  
> for the
> ubuntu variation once someone like you and me you upload it for  
> someone
> higher up on the chain to check and upload to the servers. so  
> basically
> someone is checking what someone else has packaged.

For maintainers that aren't Debian Developers (or the Ubuntu  
equivalent), yes, that's true.

In my case, I am formally a Debian Developer (have been for more than  
10 years), so my GPG signature on a binary upload is considered good  
enough, and it's not checked further, other than for really serious  
failures like a failure of the package to build from source on one of  
the autobuilders.

I do check them myself fairly thoroughly though - lintian is a very  
useful tool for checking that packages comply with policy.  Besides,  
the packages I maintain for Debian are things I use heavily in my day  
job, so it's in my own interest to make sure they work properly!

I suspect the amount of checking that goes on in the universe and  
multiverse parts of Ubuntu is pretty minimal - I believe the packages  
are basically straight rebuilds of the Debian source packages using  
the Ubuntu autobuilder network, so that the library dependencies are  
correct.

Tim


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