Purpose of source packages?

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

Hi!

What's the exact purpose of the .tar.gz source packages and the diff? I'm
asking because I want to create a package for the metapost system, that's
like metafont but produces postscript output. The currently available
distribution is a patch against the latest webc, 6.3 I think, which is a
tar.gz (>5MB I think). But the webc distrib contains everything that's
needed for a whole TeX/MF systems--much more than I need here. 

Is it possible that I reduce the source so that everyone can recompile the
package (and add a short description of my changes) plus a diff that adds
debian specific files?


Chris

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