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Bug#904302: Whether vendor-specific patch series should be permitted in the archive



Sean Whitton dijo [Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 09:22:17AM +0800]:
> As a Debian Policy delegate I hereby request that the Technical
> Committee decide whether a proposal that has been submitted to modify
> the Debian Policy Manual should be accepted:
> 
>     #850156 [n|  |  ] [dpkg-dev, debian-policy] Please firmly deprecate vendor-specific series files
> 
> I am making this request because we have not been able to establish
> consensus, but I think this bug is one that we should not just leave
> sitting open against debian-policy: if the proposal is eventually
> accepted, then leaving the bug open means more vendor-specific series
> files in the archive that then have to be removed.
> 
> There are currently at least 18 source packages which use
> vendor-specific series files.  I have not been able to determine an
> upper bound.
> (...)

Hi,

FWIW, I did a first reading only of the issue, and I find it quite
agreeable. I think it boils down to the principle of least surprise.

There are many alternative and less-obvious ways where a package can
be programmed to act differently depending on where it is being built,
but having it act at source-unpackaging time effectively hides things
and potentially leads to longer head-scratching periods. #ifdef-like
mechanisms are ugly and might carry some reliability issues, but I
think they are preferable as they are so very explicit.

So... I'd like to have some more discussion on this, particularly I'd
like Mike to explain in a nutshell his views. I have not yet read
#850156 (which I really should before stating a definitive viewpoint).

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