Re: Build systems (was Re: An alarming trend (no it's not flaimbait.))
On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 05:42:52PM -0600, Adam Heath wrote:
> You should use dbs or dpatch if you end up having lots of patches
> against upstream, and want to maintain them as short, small, separate
> patches, instead of one single huge debian diff.gz.
My main beefs with both DBS and dpatch are probably held by several
others: the tarball-in-a-tarball business (aesthetic) and the fact that
you have to perform extra steps after 'dpkg-source -x' which vary from
package to package before you can see the source that's actually built.
I realize you may not see either of these as problems.
What do you think of the perl build system? It has the maintainer run
the patch and unpatch targets manually as necessary. Providing the
maintainer's happy with this extra step, the only obvious disadvantage
is that the diff almost doubles in size. I'm considering something like
this for groff, unless the new dpkg-source will be arriving soon.
My rationale for preferring the perl system is that I'd rather have the
maintainer perform an extra step he/she's familiar with than have all
the users who download the source perform an extra step they're
unfamiliar with. Of course, it gets less practical as the .diff.gz
grows.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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