Re: volatile.debian.org: Does Debian still support it?

["Piotr Roszatycki" <piotr.roszatycki@gmail.com>]

2007/10/1, Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org>:
> What upstream does, and whether the upstream license requires source,
> are not valid arguments for whether we're meeting the DFSG.  There are
> many packages in Debian that have to be altered to comply with the
> DFSG.

I don't know any example of package which has included some additional
sources because the upstream didn't provide real-sources for its
sources.

What about sources for i.e. gifs and jpegs (wallpapers, icons, menus)?
The fact is they have a source as Photoshop or GIMP project and we
distribute precompiled files or just exported from original tool. Even
Debian logo has own source file: Photoshop project which uses Adobe
Photoshop's brush pattern and propertiary font. So it means that
Debian logo is not DFSG!

> > I.e. ICU C++ library also doesn't ship Olson database as its original
> > format and it is stored as precompiled C++ source files.
>
> You're right.  I'll file bugs on both packages when I get a moment.

The updating DateTime::TimeZone is not so easy. It is not guaranteed
that new Olson DB is compatible with library API. I.e. after updating
sarge's version of libdatetime-timezone-perl I had to fix some
function because there was serious changes in Olson DB - some of
timezone aliases was replaced by special timezones and had to be
handled in other way. Even simple changes require to fix test units
because these tests relay on actual version of Olson DB.

> If enough packages need to do this same thing, it would make sense for
> tzdata to ship a tzdata-source binary package to be build-depended on.

For all that, I like the idea about tzdata-source binary package. I
really don't want to make a build-dep on other source package. I'll
just fill the wishlist for tzdate package and modify my source package
so it will use tzdata-source at build time. It will simplify updates
in future.

I don't want to modify current packages from volatile (sarge and
etch). First, I need to test the new build method and then I'll decide
if it is a good direction.

Thank you for your suggestion.

-- 
 .''`.    Piotr Roszatycki
: :' :    mailto:Piotr.Roszatycki@gmail.com
`. `'     mailto:dexter@debian.org
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