Re: jquery debate with upstream
On Tue, 11 Mar 2014, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Repackaging these tarballs for this reason is utterly pointless.
> No-one has been able to explain what the benefit is, to anyone. All we
> get when we challenge it is, I'm sad to say, vague and abstract
> responses like this one.
The point of repacking the tarballs is to avoid ever distributing things
for which we do not have the source. We do that for multiple reasons:
1) We promise that all of the components of Debian will be free, and
thus will have source available.
2) Stripping out the non-source means that the binary package won't ever
accidentally distribute it.
The primary reason not to strip is because repacking is annoying, but
with uscan's support of Files-Excluded, and other utility scripts[1]
this is largely resolved.
Even if you don't strip, you still have to do all the work to make sure
that the embedded non-source copy isn't built against or distributed.
1: I personally use the perl team's repack.sh, but I'll probably
transition to Files-Excluded.
--
Don Armstrong http://www.donarmstrong.com
"Ban cryptography! Yes. Let's also ban pencils, pens and paper, since
criminals can use them to draw plans of the joint they are casing or
even, god forbid, create one time pads to pass uncrackable codes to
each other. Ban open spaces since criminals could use them to converse
with each other out of earshot of the police. Let's ban flags since
they could be used to pass secret messages in semaphore. In fact let's
just ban all forms of verbal and non-verbal communication -- let's see
those criminals make plans now!"
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