About native packages

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

Hi,

it seems to be a trend that maintainers try to change their packages to be
Debian native. Policy says about native packages (in the chapter about
version numbering):

<--  snip  -->

     <debian_revision>
          This part of the version number specifies the version of the
          Debian package based on the upstream version.  It may contain
          only alphanumerics and the characters `+' and `.'  (plus and full
          stop) and is compared in the same way as the <upstream_version>
          is.

          It is optional; if it isn't present then the <upstream_version>
          may not contain a hyphen.  This format represents the case where
          a piece of software was written specifically to be turned into a
          Debian package, and so there is only one `debianization' of it
          and therefore no revision indication is required.

<--  snip  -->


>From this, it should be clear that it's wrong to make a package like xv
where we haven't even the permission to distribute modified binaries
Debian native (see #96458).

It's different when the Debian maintainer is also upstream. It is argued
that then there's only one `debianization'. That's all right but please
consider the following cases before making your package Debian native:
- Do you want to release a new upstream version to fix a missing build
  dependency?
- When there's during a freeze a new version in unstable and you fix a bug
  in the version in frozen you have to make a split in your upstream
  development.

One argument for native packages is that you want to include the debian/
directory in your upstream package. You can do this even in non-native
packages and when you change nothing the .diff.gz will be empty - but it's
possible for you to change only the Debian package without releasing a new
upstream version.


cu
Adrian

-- 

Nicht weil die Dinge schwierig sind wagen wir sie nicht,
sondern weil wir sie nicht wagen sind sie schwierig.