Re: No native packages?
On 27 January 2013 18:32, Gergely Nagy <algernon@balabit.hu> wrote:
> Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org> writes:
>
>> Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote on his blog[0]:
>>
>>> Generally if software is useful in Debian Project it can be useful
>>> for other debian-like and unlike projects. In particular native
>>> packages do not offer the same patching flexibility as 3.0 (quilt),
>>> thus forcing downstream distributions to inline modify packages
>>> without DEP-3
>>> headers. This hurts us, when trying to merge useful stuff from
>>> derivatives back into Debian, as changes are not split into
>>> individual patches.
>>
>> I would tend to agree that we have too many native packages, though I
>> doubt you'll find (m)any supporters of the idea of banning them
>> completely.
>
> There are two native packages I maintain, and I've yet to hear a good
> reason for making either of them non-native. Making it harder and much
> much more inconvenient for downstream distributions to modify them is a
> *goal* in these cases: to make it harder to diverge from one
> another.
>
> As for no DEP-3? I do sincerely hope that by 2013, everyone's using a
> VCS, and we can pick patches from there.
>
If only we all can agree on the VCS to use. A patch seems to be the
common denominator.
Also, there are a lot of caveats with DVSC. I have seen a lot of
repositories where maintainers forgot to push commits and/or tags.
Or obsolete Vcs-* headers, because repository got moved, yet there was
no upload yet.
And that's easy to do, since the thing you upload to ftp doesn't
check/require for you to push anything.
NMUs & security uploads are often also missing from Vcs-* repositories.
Native packages is a social issue =) my view is that they set a bad
example and introduce a lot of "do this, unless it's native package".
Also some of the convenience stated, benefits Debian, but hurts
dowstream. As any packaging change, triggers a new .orig.tar.gz with a
new checksum.
Regards,
Dmitrijs.
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