Add Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu LTS Supported fields for Precise

[Colin Watson]

In today's Ubuntu Technical Board meeting (http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2012/01/09/%23ubuntu-meeting.html#t20:58), we resolved that Kubuntu and Edubuntu 12.04 will be supported for five years, and Xubuntu for three years. This requires some changes to Launchpad to emit the correct Supported fields.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

I wonder what else uses this field. AIUI (please correct me if I'm wrong), there are scripts that use this to determine Canonical's level of support. Since there now seems to be 3 levels of support (none, community(LTS), and Canonical), I wonder how this will be presented to the user or to people who have assumed that this field has meant 'Canonical Support' in the past?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

AFAIK, any such scripts are wrong; the Supported field is supposed to be
a statement from the Ubuntu project, not from Canonical. If you can
find any, I'd be happy to discuss it with their maintainers. In the
meantime, I think we should move ahead with keeping our statements of
Ubuntu project support up to date.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Talking with Stephane after the recent TB meeting, it is my understanding that this field would be extended so that things like software center display this properly. If for example all of these go to supported, won't software center display all of these LTS flavors' software as supported? Eg, if I look at evince in software center and click 'More info' it says: "Updates: Canonical provides critical updates for Document Viewer". AIUI, it is looking at the Supported field. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I think software-center should be changed not to explicitly talk about
Canonical there. The Supported field does not have a syntax for
distinguishing who offers support, and previous attempts to extend it to
do so have foundered in a mess of bikeshedding and political disputes.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

That would work fine for software center, but I wonder where people are supposed to get a list of officially supported software by Canonical if it isn't in the Supported field. Prior to Supported, we had our own list based on what was on the CD, but I thought the Supported field was meant in part to make it more clear programmatically what was officially supported. I realize this is turning into a bit of bikeshedding there, but as there are (perceived) expectations on my team based on the Supported field, software center, main vs universe, CD images and seeds, I thought it worth bringing up. Perhaps it should be discussed in a different forum, and I am happy to do that.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Sorry for my late reply.

The two consumers of the support status field that I know of are software-center and the "ubuntu-support-status" tool.
I agree with Jamie here that its important for some of our users to know who is behind the support when they make
decisions about the packages to deploy.