Re: postscropt document without source

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Colin Tuckley writes ("postscropt document without source"):
> Obviously I can remove the postscript file from the binary package, but is
> this sufficient or do I also need to remove it from the source package -
> which implies re-packaging the .orig.tar.gz

We have been adopting the practice of removing such things from the
source tarballs too.  Personally I think this is a waste of our time,
unless the files are very large or there is some other reason why
leaving them in is especially harmful.

One reason why it might be especially harmful is if the upstream
licence is GPL: in that case, for files which are provided without
source we have no licence to distribute at all so we are required by
copyright law to remove them.

Is this the case here ?

> I'd like to get this right because the package was rejected when it was last
> uploaded (by a previous maintainer) because of this.

If you do leave it in, do make it clear somewhere in the source
package that you've done so.  People have been suggesting
  debian/README.source
as a place for documenting use of dpatch, quilt, et al, and it seems
like this kind of thing would be a good fit too.

Ian.