Re: Couchdb package

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

Hello,

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010, Sam Bisbee wrote:
> As I said before, you can fork something without making code changes to it.
> It's a fork because the packaging is significantly different than the way it's
> packaged upstream. I did not mean to suggest that upstream doesn't want people
> to use CouchDB in the way you're suggesting, but it's packaged upstream to
> default to a system wide service.

Upstream does not provide packaging, so how can you package it differently
from upstream?

Furthermore, the "packaging" would not differ from upstream since when you
do "apt-get install couchdb" (the official name of the software) you get
the system wide service much like what you would get with make && make
install.

> As I understand it we are not in the business of changing that unless we
> have a real technical reason to do so (ie., doesn't meet Debian policy
> or there's a bug).

We do have a technical reason and it has been explained to you. The fact
that the technical reason doesn't concern couchdb but rather the
properties of the system with desktopcouch installed doesn't change
anything.

Debian is great because each compoment is provided in a way so that it
integrates well with other parts of the system. That's the spirit of the
Debian policy on many points. And here you're blocking a change
that would make couchdb integrate better with another package on a purely
philosophical reason.

We routinely do changes that are neither bugs nor covered by the policy
when it make the software more interoperable with other packages (using .d
dirs instead of a config file, deciding whether the service should run by
default or not, providing a debconf-based configuration generator, etc.).

> > Please reconsider the decision or provide an alternative solution that does not
> > involve the local admin/user having to manually change the default
> > configuration to disable the system-wide daemon.
> 
> FYI, Sergei already implemented that alternative in the init script, so it
> should be even easier to get the configuration you're looking for now. It
> defaults to the system wide config as upstream intended.
> 
> Other than that I don't have another solution off the top of my head that
> doesn't require you, or the user, changing config files.

$ dpkg -S /etc/default/couchdb
couchdb: /etc/default/couchdb

It's a configuration file, it can't be modified from another package, it's
purely for the end user. It doesn't solve our problem.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog