Re: mICQ packaging (was: Re: On the matter of Qt packaging)
Hi,
On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 03:08:00AM +0100, Rüdiger Kuhlmann wrote:
> # Sander decided to remove the package from Debian entirely, and Rüdiger
> # basically insulted us all for having done so.
>
> There was no reason to do so, because it still worked somewhat, and I wasn't
> even told by the maintainer (who was on the mICQ mailing list) and only
> found out accidently when the bug reports mysteriously disappeared. Good
> reasons to be pissed.
Although it's always nice to speak with upstream about such changes, it
is not mandated.
> # [...] and DanielS suck too.
> # [...] and BenC [...] suck too. We're surrounded by incompetents!
alrighty...
> # > Ruediger knows exactly what a Maintainer is, despite your wrong (or
> # > misunderstandable) Translation.
> # Maybe, and he tries to become a developer.
>
> With packaging mICQ being the most important reason.
You are aware that you cannot just hijack packages, do you? Except when
the current maintainer is MIA or the package was royally broken for a
long time. And I don't consider your comments further down to justify
the micq package to be called 'royally broken'.
> But I can flood it with minor bug reports, if you want. It's just that
> a private mail to the maintainer _should_ be less work if it doesn't
> need to be fixed immediately.
You're wrong here IMHO. The BTS is the right medium for
discussing/tracking bugs, not private mail.
> * dropping FAQ, AUTHORS and README from the package (his debian/copyright even
> refers to the README).
> * dropping of mICQ's logo menu entry
well, OK.
> * (90% unnecessary changes in white spaces in debian /rules)
some people consider this good style to cut down on the size of the
debian diff.
> * the removal of the -O4 option - if you really want to triple its size...
Policy, Section 11.1.
> * the removal of the "Debian" extra version marker -- I FREAKIN' NEED AS MUCH
> EXTRA VERSION AS POSSIBLE IF A USER COMES UP WITH A PROBLEM, SET IT TO
> "Debian" BUT JUST DON'T REMOVE IT, THANK YOU. Mandrake did manage to get
> that right, so Debian should be, too.
what's that about? if you need to encode 'extra information' in the
version string, something seems to be broken on your part. See Policy,
Section 4., for more information about the version number format.
> * [replacing of two upstream changelog entries with his own, informationless
> ones (they could be better, but ok)]
> * (adding lots of trailing spaces to the changelog - we don't have anything
> better to do, do we?)
> * (some changes in debian/copyright - we just have to do it differently.
> I'm not sure what the policy currently says about encoding, so transcoding
> it from UTF8 for the official package is probably okay)
> So his package has three things left out, a huge pile of totally useless
> changes, and a few changes that might actually be usefull.
Wow. so you bitch essentially about whitespace, some documentation
files, valid policy updates and two changelog entries?
> Add to that a trivial to fix bug in woody that's so annoying that you
> don't want to use it and a copyright violation as well in woody,
You might want to read up on how updates to woody are handled.
cheers,
Michael
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