1.0 issues: Packaging (esp. source)
Subject: 1.0 issues: Packaging (esp. source)
Short Description
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There appears to be concensus among the developers that the current
source packaging system, which has debianized source packages,
should be replaced by a system that uses unmodified source.
Desirable goals for source packaging
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- Upstream sources should be used unmodified.
- It should be as useful as reasonably possible for non-debian
users and non-debian distribution maintainers.
- The source packaging system should support non-intel architectures.
Links
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- http://www.redhat.com/alpha/alpha.html Red Hat's Linux on Alpha page.
- http://www.redhat.com/rpm.html Red Hat's packaging system.
- mailto:linux-bogus@cs.unc.edu The Bogus developers.
- http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/linux-faq/section1.html#cpu
ports to other architectures.
- http://www.freebsd.org/, http://www.netbsd.org/ The freeware BSDs.
- http://www.wi.LeidenUniv.nl/Beheer/texi/standards_toc.html
the GNU coding standards
- vger mailing lists: linux-{admin,fsf,qag,standards}
Proposal
--------
- Distribute wholly unmodified source
- Have the source extracted and patches by a 'debianizer' script.
This could be akin to perl5-style patches (a sh script combined with
the patch).
- First apply platform-independant patches
- Then apply platform-dependant patches
- Then apply debian-specific patches (optional, but on by default).
- Provide a standardized compilation front end (a la debian.rules)
as part of the non-debian-specific patches.
- Develop this (PCKGSTND?) in discussion with other Linux distributions,
the non-intel porters, the FSF and perhaps the BSD distributions.
Issues to be resolved / TO DO
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- Tools for making a debianizer (anybody got a better name?)
- Update the packaging guidelines
- Take the pros but not the cons from current packaging schemes
- How to do architecture-dependance stuff with the control, {pre,post}{inst,rm}
files?
Ray
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