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Re: RFS: crotch

Hi,

haven't known that you are the author, so some things are different:

Chris Amthor schrieb:

Hi Patrick,

<schoenfeld@in-medias-res.com> wrote:

[...]
IANADD so i cannot upload it for you, 

No problem.


but anyways some comments.  Hope they help you.


Yes, they helped, though I still have some questions left. Thank you
very much! Since this is my first attempt to get a package into
Debian, any advice is more than appreciated.

Especially the technical parts were indeed helpful. The main part I
still do not get is that upstream/author/URL thing. I wrote the C
code, I wrote the Makefile, I "invented" the name and I built the
packages for i386, powerpc and sparc. The only "official" sources for
crotch are my webserver and my fileserver.
Okay, so *you* are upstream. So ask yourself the question: Do you intend to publish it *only* in Debian (personally I think there is no good reason for that)? If not, you may/should provide a website, on which others can download the software, too. Then you would include this homepage in the apppropriate places of your package and provide a proper orig tarball, a debian diff, etc. But you even have it easier, cause you can change your original source, e.g. regarding the install process instead of rewriting it in debian/rules or helping out with patches. 


So why do I have to make a difference between the packager, the
maintainer, the author? The URL I got the sources for building the
packages was: file:///mnt/nfs/Develop/C/crotch/crotch-1.0.1/, that
cannot be of any use if I mention it in the package.
Btw. you do not have to make a difference between the packager/maintainer/author but you should tell at the right places who it is. See above comments. 


But I'll go through my questions one by one:

[...]


  - public-key-file: What is it for? As far as I see, you don't package
    it, so why should you need to include it?


Well, dput refused to upload the unsigned package. So I took my GPG
key and things worked. Which point did I miss?
Well, but for signing your .changes files you do not need to carry your key with the package. Indeed it must not be there. 


  - Your package does not include a manpage for a binary. Thats not an
   'error', but is highly recommended and the fact that there is none,
   results in a lintian warning.


Ahem, correct. That's for two reasons: firs crotch only understands
two arguments, no options in only uses STDIN and STDOUT, therefore I
thought I could omit a manpage. Second, I do not know how to write
manpages... :o(
Okay, so it does not have much to say in the man. But users might ask the man first if they want to know, which parameters your software has. Also: You can include an information about you as the AUTHOR and informations about how they can provide bugreports. 

About writing of man pages. It is easier then writing applications.
Just open up an existing manpage in an editor and look at it. On the first sight it might look a little bit obscure, but it isn't. Even I am able to write manpages (but I cannot code much C) 


[...]


    You could fix warnings yourself with patches or
    ask upstream to do so. In every case you may want to inform the
    upstream author.


So I have to inform myself? Isn't the upstream my upload itself, hence
me the author?
Haha. Ofcourse you don't need to inform yourself. But you can fix it in upstream source ;-) 


Why should I let others see that I'm packaging S/W that nobody knows
of? Everyone that already has got the software could ether get the
source tarball or a package, so why should anyone go repackage it?

Or is there a general difference in the procedure of getting bugfixes
upoloaded than getting initial packages uploaded?
Not really. An ITP is a bugreport on bugs.debian.org which is handled a bit different. Say: It is listed on the WNPP page [1]. But you are right. If nobody yet knows that your software exists you don't need to WNPP. 


* debian/compat:
    - Your compatibility level is 4, but thats old. Instead you may want
      to use the current level 5.


Hmm, with level 5 dpgk-buildpackage failed for some reason. I think
I'll have to check this once again.
Have a look at man debhelper. It lists the differences between the different compat levels. 


Anyways, thanks for your help and best regards,


You're welcome. Best Regards

Patrick

[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
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