Requirement for "unmodified source" (was: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting)
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 10:39:24AM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 08:45:09PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
>
>> > - binary packages must be built from the unmodified Debian source
>> > (required, among other reasons, for license compliance)
>
>> Is this a simple sanity requirement (i.e. no hacked crap being
>> uploaded to the archive), or does it imply that all packages in base
>> (or base + build-essential) need to be buildable from unmodified
>> source?
>
> I assume what you're asking here is whether non-GNU/Linux ports have to
> have the same base system as the GNU/Linux ports do. This was not
> implied. The implication here is that you can't have a separate version
> of the same source package for your architecture just because the
> maintainer isn't willing to accept patches.
There might be an other case where a changed source package might be
needed: People are talking about releases of tier-2 arches which are
made by the porter teams, and made on the basis of a major release. If
there was still a FTBFS-on-tier-2 bugs (not RC!) in a package, a source
change is needed for such a tier-2-arch release; it's not possible to
simply take unstable sources where the fix has been applied.
To me, this would still be "unmodified Debian source", it just happens
to be a different version; I guess license-wise there is no problem with
that. It might be a problem with disk space and archive maintenance,
however.
Would it be possible, from the ftp-masters point of view, to have not
only the stable sources of the released architectures in the archive,
but additionally also the patched sources for tier-2 arches? Of course
the different porter teams of tier-2 arches would have to coordinate, so
that one changed stable-plus-tier2-patches source version is
sufficient.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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