Re: Bug#457353: gdome2-xslt: should not be a Debian-native package
Neil Williams wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>> tags 457353 + wontfix
>> thanks
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 07:20:57PM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
>>> You're missing a .diff.gz, which means that this is a native package. This
>>> package is in no way specific to Debian, which means that this shouldn't be
>>> a Debian-native package.
>> Sorry, but I disagree with this interpretation. For me a Debian native
>> package is a package which contains the official debian packaging stuff
>> in the upstream tarball. Since I'm also upstream for gdome2-xslt and the
>> software has been used historically always as a Debian package, to me
>> that is a native Debian package.
>
> To me, just because a package is only currently used in Debian does not
> mean it should be Debian native. Native, to me at least, means "This
> package is only likely to *work* on Debian because it needs basic parts
> of Debian infrastructure that only Debian (or Debian derivatives) will
> be able to provide)." Things like apt and dpkg, basically.
>
> I have a mixture of upstream projects, some of which have only ever been
> released in Debian but not all of those are native to Debian. The ones
> that are include deb-gview (reads .deb packages), apt-cross, dpkg-cross
> and emdebian-tools which are definitely Debian native as they do fancy
> things with the apt cache and dpkg build process. Others like pilot-qof,
> qof and gpe-expenses are most definitely not native - even though only
> Debian/Ubuntu has included pilot-qof in a release AFAICT.
>
> i.e. native should be a last resort - used only when it is all but
> impossible for the package to be used outside Debian or some distro
> fundamentally based on Debian like Ubuntu.
>
>> Of course if the global consensus will change so that native packages
>> are only those Debian-specific I would be more than happy to change
>> gdome2-xslt, but at the moment I feel there is no such a consensus.
I thought this consensus was already a fact and that some maintainers
just disagree and nobody forced them to change yet...
The reasons why it shouldn't be a native package IMHO:
* it's not specific to Debian
* it wastes bandwidth as every upload contains all the sources
* it's confusing for newcomers
* it's error prone for NMUs and security updates
Cheers
Luk
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