On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:14:04 -0500 Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net> wrote: > On 22-Apr-07, 14:39 (CDT), Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> wrote: > > > > I'd like to see all library source packages having a minimum of 4 > > binary packages required by Policy: the SONAME, the -dev, the -dbg > > and a -doc package. (Libraries for perl or other non-compiled > > languages would be exempt from -dbg packages but not -doc.) > > 1. Rather than cluttering the archive and Packages file with -dbg > packages that will (mostly) never be used, Don't underestimate how many people either want to help fix bugs or want to develop their own software. Why push them to Fedora? It's bad enough that many upstream teams think that they have to test on Fedora, Debian and SuSE. > how about mandating a > "debug" target in library debian/rules files, so that when someone > does need the debug package, it's trivial to build. Since the person > most likely to need the target is the package maintainer, there would > be some incentive to make sure it works. It complicates bug testing enormously if the bug tester has to rebuild A DEPENDENCY of the package just to get the debug symbols - it's a DIFFERENT build, it may hide or even replace certain bugs. The person needing the lib -dbg is NOT the package maintainer, that's my point - it's needed by upstream of the applications that use the library. Separate DD's from upstream - the needs of DD's do not always match the needs of an upstream developer. In this case, the needs of the DD are largely irrelevant - the needs of upstream are important. Upstream are using SourceForge or Berlios, not Alioth. Upstream don't use dh_strip or debhelper - they need us to provide what dh_strip can give them. When I'm fixing bugs in the Gtk2 port of quicklist, why should I have to rebuild gtk +extra2? It's a MUCH bigger package. Plus, rebuilding it on my system may introduce bugs that would cause build problems on other distributions that used "the original" gtk+extra2. > 2. Why a seperate -doc? API docs should be part of the -dev package. In practice, such attitudes are commonly expressed as RTSL. (Read The Source, Luke). That does NOT encourage upstream usage of Debian as a distro. Is man (3) really so hard for a DD to provide? > I'm going to guess that for *most* libraries, the docs are a trivial > part of the size of the -dev package. For those with significant > documentation, sure, a seperate -doc makes sense, just as we do now. I think libraries should be encouraged to provide significant documentation - what we have now is simply not enough. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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