On 2021-04-14 18:39 +0000, Marius Gripsgard wrote:

> I would really like to avoid a fork, it's not worth doing dual
> work. Did you ping ofono devs at irc?  Also have you sent upstream
> patches? If a fork is the way you want to go, you will need to
> rename it as the existing packages need to follow upstream, we can't
> just rip an existing packages away from upstream.

Debian can package mmsd with whatever set of patches it sees fit. If
the end result is ChrisT's version, with Modem Manager support, then I
think that's reasonable. mmsd is not currently packaged in debian so I
don't think a rename is required. Ultimately it's up to maintainers to
choose which upstream is most appropriate. There used to be only one,
but increasingly one gets a choice of varying degrees of active
maintenance. (This can be a huge pain making life quite awkward for
maintainers, and I find Debian is the only org trying to unify a
diverse set of versions where a load of people have scratched their
own itch and then just left it like that.)

Ultimately we want the best functionality for our users, and if the
old upstream has been inactive for years then using this new,
maintained version of mmsd may well be the best course. Efforts should
continue to either give Chris access to the original repo or
officially declare it 'under new management' so that there is a
canonical place for the codebase, but in the meantime it's OK for
debian to have a big patch.

Versioning could be tricky in some situations, but SFACT the ofono
mmsd is just 0.0 so the debian version can be 0.0.something and remain
compatible with a shift back to that repo at some point.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/