Re: proposed release goal: DEBIAN/md5sums for all packages
Russ Allbery schrieb:
> Sven Mueller <sven@debian.org> writes:
>
>> If it is created on install, why is it in the packages filelist in the
>> first place? Other packages also generate (supposedly architecture
>> dependend) files during postinst, without shipping a placeholder in the
>> .deb - so what is the reason why [ia]spell does that?
>>
>> Uhm, also: I couldn't find any such example in the [ia]spell packages
>> themselves nor in wamerican, myspell-de-de, ispell-de-de so perhaps
>> (some of) those packages used to do that sort of stuff, but refrain from
>> doing so now?
>
> All I know about this topic is at:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2006/10/msg00075.html
> http://bugs.debian.org/324111
> http://bugs.debian.org/346410
> http://bugs.debian.org/374949
> http://bugs.debian.org/401070
>
> I'm happy to remove the exception again if this has changed.
>
In all those mails, the only justification for shipping these files in
the package - though they are changed (rebuilt?) during postinst - is
the following sentence from Brian Nelson (pyro):
> Also, not
> including these files in the .deb packages significantly complicates the
> packaging. I really don't want to change to manangement of the files in
> maintainer scripts without a very good reason to do so.
He doesn't give any information _why_ this complicates packaging that
much, while his decision imposes additional work and complexity on
others (be it the exception in lintian and probably linda or the
difference between "dpkg -L" and the contents of the md5sums file, which
makes integrity checking a bit harder).
IMHO, packages (.deb) should only include files which are either listed
in conffiles or in md5sums.
The hash files in aspell/ispell/wordlist packages (for example*:
aspell-en, idutch) are neither conffiles nor in md5sums. They are said
to be arch-dependend and if I understand the aspell-en debian/rules
correctly, they are shipped as empty files. I don't see why they
couldn't just be created empty by the postinst before building the hash
tables. I especially don't see how that complicates packaging.
cu,
Sven
* Thanks to Kurt Roeckx for the examples
PS: I just verified that the files in question are indeed zero-length
files at least in aspell-en
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