Re: Section for a new package

[Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu>]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 08:15:24PM +0200, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 07:57:44PM +0200, Lionel Elie Mamane wrote:

>>> I have been thinking about packaging DBDesigner, a GUI tool for
>>> database design.  It's GPL but it requires Borland Kylix to
>>> compile. Is this contrib, non-free, or not suitable for inclusion
>>> in Debian?

>> contrib

> Really? Is it possible at all to have software which need non-free
> compiler in Debian?

<splitting hair mode>
 No, the "contrib" and "non-free" sections of the FTP archives are not
 part of Debian.
</splitting hair mode>

For a precedent on this, note that a lot of Java packages were in this
situation before, and some (a lot?) still are.

For a contrib package, I suppose it is preferable that you have built
the binaries yourself rather than just redistribute upstream-provided
binaries. Note that the package has to obey policy 4.2. Thus it has to
be buildable within Debian + contrib + non-free + eventually some
other .deb gotten from elsewhere. I don't see a specific requirement
that this "building" be actual compilation and not simply putting
binaries in a .deb; but maybe I'm behaving too much in lawyer-mode
here. Someone can shed some light on that point? It'd be better if the
compiler were in non-free, or if not possible available from an
apt-gettable archive somewhere.

Now that I think of it, the last condition is pretty necessary for any
kind of security support... It may thus be a hard requirement rather
than "it'd be better".

-- 
Lionel