Modifying upstream sources
Paul Slootman recently filed bug report #27933 against the xspread
package which I maintain. If you try to extract the sources, you are
asked if you want to "Get file `configure' from RCS with lock? [y]".
Even if you accept this you can't unpack the sources because the RCS
file appears to be locked.
The problem is in the upstream tar file. Someone was sloppy and did
an RCS checkin without setting the RCS directory properly. Now the
tarball contains both "configure" and "configure,v". Even if I delete
configure,v before building the package, dpkg-buildpackage will ignore
the deletion. (Is there a way of overriding this? I haven't seen
mention of one in the documentation.)
AFAIK the upstream sources are no longer being maintained. I also have
other open bugs against xspread and I can't resolve them because they
are problems with the upstream code.
How pure does the upstream code have to be kept? Would it be an
unforgivable sin for me to unpack the tar file, delete the file
configure,v and tar the directory back up again calling the result
xspread-3.1.1c.orig.tar.gz? The result would not be exactly the
original tar file but it would work better.
Can anyone think of another workaround?
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