The comings and goings of the partner repo
The comments in the previous post raised an interesting question about the Ubuntu/Canonical partner repository. What exactly is in it for the various releases? Did Zimbra ever get in? Well the repos are all publicly available so we can go see. Here are the contents of the partner repo from Dapper to Lucid. Caveats are that there could have been stuff in at a point in time that have subsequently been removed and Lucid is not released yet so the list there is rather more suspect than the others. I also don’t know when things were added to each distro, it could be that packages have been incrementally added to Hardy as it is the current Long Term Support release, maybe the Lucid list will grow over time, maybe a bunch of those Hardy packages will go in to Lucid as it is the next LTS release. What does it all mean? I don’t know. What do you think?
The Zimbra story is interesting. It isn’t in the list below, but as Jef Spaleta points out, the Zimbra desktop package for Hardy is in the pool. I, for one, am puzzled by this.
Dapper 6.06
db2exc
desktopsecure
realplay
sugarcrm
Edgy 6.10
nothing at all
Feisty 7.04
nothing at all
Gutsy 7.10
nothing at all
Hardy 8.04
wasce-server
parallels-modules-2.6.24-19-server
parallels-modules-2.6.24-19-generic
parallels-modules-2.6.24-18-server
parallels-modules-2.6.24-18-generic
adobe-flashplugin
informix-csdk
gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-wmv-doc
gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-doc
pdvd-doc
parallels-modules-2.6.24-25-server
parallels-modules-2.6.24-25-generic
parallels-modules
parallels
symphony
skype-mid
parallels-modules-2.6.24-24-server
parallels-modules-2.6.24-24-generic
informix-oat
informix-ids
informix-license
informix-pdo
ibm-gsk7bas
db2exc
informix-ids-demo
arkwui
arkppostgres
arkpmysql
arkpldap
arkobk
acroread
zarafa-webaccess-muc
zarafa-webaccess-mobile
zarafa-webaccess
zarafa-licensed
zarafa-libs
zarafa-dev
zarafa-dbg
zarafa
Intrepid 8.10
adobe-flashplugin
gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-wmv-doc
gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-doc
pdvd-doc
symphony
skype-mid
acroread
Jaunty 9.04
accountz-baz
adobe-flashplugin
symphony
alfresco-pdf2swf
alfresco-community
openbravo-erp
skype-mid
acroread
Karmic 9.10
adobe-flashplugin
uex
symphony
accountz-baz
acroread
Lucid 10.04
adobe-flashplugin
acroread
dapper drake lts 6.06 !!! grrrr
6.04 xD
Yes it was. I am full of fail. I have fixed it and as soon as I find my cilice and whip I will repent for my transgression.
It’d be interesting to also list which of these partner packages have the full source tarball uploaded (e.g., wasce-server) vs those that don’t (e.g., skype / acroread).
Full source upload could potentially be adopted and transitioned to multiverse?
are you just reading the contents of the Packages files?
That doesn’t tell the whole story. For example opera was available for multiple releases up to and including hardy and then it was pulled..quietly. There are still dsc files in http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/o/opera/ that Canonical didn’t wipe.
Canonical doesn’t make any effort to communicate to the Ubuntu community when software drops out of the partner repo even when it silently goes missing from still active LTS trees. They just update the repository information to no longer include the binaries. Here’s a nice forum thread that adds some perspective about Opera and Zdesktop both just up and disappearing.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-980248.html
You’ll also note this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bug/153798 which lists opera as being published in the Gutsy partner repository.
yes, just reading the packages file which, as we both point out, does not tell the whole story.
Dropping packages from the partner repo without any notification is the real problem which makes them next to useless. I’m sure VMWare Player (or perhaps it was Server) used to be in the partner repos too, which I found invaluable… for about four months before it disappeared and I was left having to grab it from VMWare’s site. Ditto with Opera.
If the partner repo is going to exist in any useful way, it needs a commitment from Canonical that any software which makes it in is going to continue to be available in future releases, and that they will give a reasonable notification period (at least 6 months, preferably more) before removing them. If the partners themselves can’t commit to that, then they shouldn’t go into the repository at all.
Dapper was 6.06 not 6.04.
I have now rectified this critical flaw in the article.