Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
>
> > And the lintian warning goes away by explicitly setting source format to
> > 1, so that's not standardizing on the "set of improved source formats"
> > /anyway/, that's just nagging maintainers to make a change to their
> > packages that AFAICS only helps your real goal if they actually
> > *convert* the package to 3.0 in the process. I think trying to use
> > lintian as a cudgel here is counterproductive, particularly so long as
> > the 3.0 format is still not supported as well as 1.0 by all the
> > peripheral packaging tools.
>
> I don't believe Lintian is being used as a cudgel here. I'm one of the
> people who does not currently plan to convert many of my packages to the
> 3.0 format, so I'm a bit sensitive to that. I think Lintian is being
> proactive in helping people avoid surprises should the dpkg-dev default
> change, which to me seems like a good thing to do.
It's a combination of both. Here are the reasons that led me to submit
this wishlist request:
- several people commented that being explicit about the desired format
is better than trying to guess the desired format based on what's
requested (command line options to change compression scheme for example) and
what's available (orig.tar file mainly).
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=557459
- I'm still undecided whether I will change the default format in
dpkg-source but obviously once all packages provide
debian/source/format, I will be able to make the change without much bad
impact.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=553928
- the adoption rate of the new format is pretty good but that's also
because I promoted it a lot so that maintainers currently have it in
their mind when updating their packages. Having lintian remind them for
packages where they have not yet decided which format to use is a good
thing to keep the steady rate.
http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/dpkg-v3/
- the message in the lintian warning also asks for feedback because I want
to know why people decide to not use the newer formats so that I can try
fixing/improving whatever is needed.
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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