Re: Bug#322282: ITP: swapspace -- Dynamic swap space manager
Scripsit Jeroen Vermeulen <jtv@thaiopensource.org>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 04:30:22PM +1000, Anibal Monsalve Salazar wrote:
>> [Jeroen, you can be the owner of this ITP, if you wish so.]
> I'm not a Debian developer, so I'm probably not a useful owner.
You can maintain a package for Debian without officially being a
Debian Developer. But it may not be a good idea to do so if you
can't see yourself becoming one eventually.
> I do, however, like to integrate Debian packaging and patches as a
> first-class citizen in the upstream source tree.
By all means integrate patches from Debian in your source treee.
On the other hand integrating Debian's *packaging* infrastructure
(i.e., the debian/ subdirectory) in upstream source cannot be
recommended. It only creates trouble for developers when the policy
and environment they are packaging for drift out of sync with your
offer (as it will inevitably). Even in the cases where a Debian
developer is himself the upstream author of some software, it is
common that he maintains the Debian infrastructure separately from the
upstream tarball.
The best way to be packager friendly as an upstream author is to
provide a robust, portable build infrastructure with a configure
script and flexible 'install' targets in the Makefile that behave like
autoconf-generated ones. Keep autotools support files up-to-date when
you release, and so forth.
If you want, you can encourage packagers to submit patches for your
makefiles rather than working around them in their Debian rules. Many
packagers by default try to touch the upstream makefiles as little as
possible, but that ought to be reversible if the upstream author
requests so.
--
Henning Makholm "We will discuss your youth another time."
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