Working source packages available

[imurdock@gnu.ai.mit.edu]

   Date: Wed, 6 Apr 94 22:44 PDT
   From: quinlan@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu (Daniel Quinlan)

   > The base system in binary and source form will be soon to follow
   > (along with the packages that I will be maintaining, such as GCC).
   > We hope that the new package maintainers can have packages ready
   > within a few weeks after this happens.

   Please remember that Ian made the source distribution a major priority
   in order to help the new package maintainers.  I hope that this
   planning will help shorten a "few weeks" somewhat.

   Also, after this preliminary source distribution, the maintainers will
   be in charge of their own source and making it available according to
   the Debian guidelines.

   I think that does it.  Ian, did I get it all?

Yes.  If you are fairly certain that you are the maintainer of a
package, then go ahead and download the appropriate package (or
packages) and start working on it.  I've done some work on all of the
packages I uploaded, but most of them are not done.  The source
guidelines will be fairly similar to the preliminary version posted a
few weeks ago; the most work comes from ensuring that the source
package generates the equivilant binary package, and this will still
be a requirement.  If you do everything right, then after the new
guidelines are posted you should only have to make a few adjustments
to the Makefile (or the Makefile.in, if your package comes with a
configure script).  I'll have the new source guidelines posted by
tomorrow.

The binary packaging guidelines are changing quite a bit, so don't
even bother trying to make a binary package.

Ian Murdock <imurdock@gnu.ai.mit.edu>