Re: GNU vs. Debian standards?

[Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu>]

"W. Borgert" <debacle@knorke.in-berlin.de> writes:

   1. According to the GNU coding standards there has to be a
   ChangeLog file in the top level directory of package.
   Debian standards want me to put a changelog in the debian
   subdirectory.  For a GNU package that is Debianized later
   this is fine, because the first is maintained by the
   upstream maintainer, the latter by the Debian package
   maintainer.  But what, if there is no upstream source and I
   want to be compliant to both standards?

You should maintain two changelogs then (one for program changes, one
for Debian packaging changes), or simply not worry about the GNU
standards.  The Debian changelog is required by the Debian tools, and
required to be in a specific format; the GNU changelog is just
required by convention.

   2. The preferred documentation format of GNU is texinfo.
   In most Linux-related projects it's DocBook, AFAIK.  What
   do we prefer, if we have the choice?  Personally, I like
   LaTeX best, but...

Texinfo is really nice IMO because Info has an online index and it's
full-text searchable.  Others disagree.

   3. Is it DFSG-conform to prohibit any linking of a program
   to non-free libraries?  

Yes.  For instance, if your program is GPL'd then this is prohibited.

   I.e. if I disallow this, the program cannot be used legally on a
   system without glibc (NT w/o GNUwin32, Sun w/o glibc ...).

System libraries are exempted from the GPL's prohibition.

   4. If I want to include man pages or other documentation in
   more than one language, how to do this?  I don't want to
   enlarge the package w/ 1001-languages documentation.

You could make separate binary packages for each language, I suppose,
but usually they don't take up too much more space.