Re: synching non-free packages for sarge

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

[ dropping debian-mips as this is not mips-specific ]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:

> amu@alum.mit.edu (Aaron M. Ucko) writes:
> 
> > One issue that we may wish to address before releasing sarge is that
> > some arch-dependent non-free packages are behind because the
> > autobuilders only touch main and porters only sporadically build them
> > for their architectures.
> 
> One problem with this is that for non-free packages it is unclear if
> it is even allowed to build them. Ofhand I know of one (pine) which
> may never be build on any arch. Why it is in debian as source only
> package instead of a pine-src package (deb containing current sources
> like other packages have) is beyond me.

We already have a source package format, which is quite good for the task
it does. Why the fact that we can't distribute the .deb means the source
package format isn't appropriate anymore and we need a src-inside-a-deb
is beyond me.

I still remember the comments by Ian Jackson the very first time a -src
package was created. Read them if you can. Perhaps they are in the BTS
somewhere.