Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Mike Hommey wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine.
> > I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for
> > switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not
> > switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches?
> > Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats?
>
> Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an
> effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ?
I believe there's a benefit in standardizing on a set of improved source formats.
There might be not short term benefit for the current maintainer, but
it's a benefit for our derivatives distributions to be able to simply add
patches in a consistent manner. It will also be a benefit for Debian if in
2 years some newbie packager doesn't have to learn about the limitations
of the source format 1.0 when they try to add an icon to a source package
or when they package a new upstream version that is now bzip2 compressed.
In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case
pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he
doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file
debian/source/format with "3.0 (quilt)" and you're done.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/
My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/
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