Re: Debian vs. BOGUS

[Raul Miller <moth@magenta.com>]

Karl writes:
   This is not the question.  Debian provides a database and it is a
   question, which information should go in this database (BTW, I'm
   not a programmer; I as an user would like to have such information
   in the database).

Can you elaborate a bit on the nature of this information, from a
database point of view?

[1] What's its intended purpose (how can you tell if it's "done
right")?

[2] How is it typically used in BOGUS?

[3] How does our current mechanism [debianized source package] fail in
achieving this purpose?

I think you're going to say something about keeping up with package
changes.  Perhaps you're also going to say something about dealing
with package bugs (hopefully, the debian-bugs mechanism deals with
this adequately).

Personally, I've found it convenient to set up my debian.rules
packages to fetch the originals.  However, this mechanism is quite at
odds with a need to write original code (e.g. consider Ian Jackson's
dpkg package).  I'm not completely sure what the best approach is for
packages which contain a mix of externally supplied code and
significant locally written configuration mechanisms -- this is the
sort of issue that's been bogging down uucp.

If your experience with BOGUS has given you insight into this area,
I'd greatly appreciate learning from you.

-- 
Raul