Re: Packages for BALL

[Steffen Moeller <steffen_moeller@gmx.de>]

Hi Michael, hi Andreas,

Michael Banck wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 02:46:45PM +0100, Andreas Hildebrandt wrote:
>> This is my first attempt at packaging, and comments would be very
>> welcome. Everything is checked into svn, package 'ball'.
> 
> I can only reiterate:  This indirect calling of scripts in the build and
> install targets is ugly.  Especially the install part - why don't you
> add this to your upstream build system if you maintain that as well?
> I.e., why do you remove the static libraries in the createBALLDeb
> script, instead of adding a switch/option to your upstream build system
> to not build the in the first place?  Why does the upstream build system
> not install the files and documentation?  Certainly one can do this in
> the Debian build system, but this is usually only a temporary band-aid
> until the upstream build system got fixed.

let me (try to) translate that a bit. You are saying, that the demands
of Debian are not really special. The only thing that should happen is
the moving of directories from the install directory to the package
directories after the "make install" was executed, right? And these few
lines of code are either zero lines of code since there are the
<packagename>.install files for this that are interpreted from the
dh_install helper tool, or they are just a few lines for whatever
reasonss but they are not worth a whole script of hundred lines.

I agree that the current solution is not nice in terms of how Debian
normally works. However, I also felt that as a start it is not too
dramatical either and I would feel ok with it as a first upload. This
would resolve over time and we could work along with BALL rightaway.

> Also, you seem to hardcode python2.5 in the createBALLDeb script, I
> think this is discouraged cause your packages will break once Debian
> switches its default python version and/or removes python2.5.

BALL needs Python 2.5 or (probably) later. What do you suggest to become
mostly version-independent?

Many thanks for your review.

Best,
Steffen