Re: Automatic Debug Packages

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org>]

Steve Langasek dijo [Sun, Aug 09, 2009 at 05:15:39PM -0700]:
> >         If we are going to enshrine ddebs into policy, we might as well
> >  teach dpkg about ddebs.
> 
> I don't have a strong opinion on whether ddebs should be documented in
> policy, but I certainly don't agree with requiring dpkg to understand them
> as a prerequisite for implementing a general purpose, public archive for
> auto-stripped debugging symbols packages.  There really is no reason for
> dpkg to treat these packages specially - a simple namespace convention
> imposed by Policy (i.e., reserving package names ending in "-ddeb" for use
> by this archive, which is what has been proposed) is sufficient, and
> requires no changes to dpkg, which is as it should be.
> 
> I think the .ddeb extension is a red herring.  There ought not be anything
> new to teach dpkg, here; the only thing of relevance is that there not be
> namespace clashes between the ddebs and the debs in the main archive, and
> the filename is not relevant to that at all.

I understand your concern about this extension, but I do see it as a
merit. Of course, our tools must be aware of it.  And apt should know
-before updating or whatnot- that a package was installed from a ddeb,
if they are to share the base name. But I feel ddebs will allow
debugging packages creation and installation to take place in a much
more transparent, automatic fashion. I think this will be in the
interest of both users and developers.

-- 
Gunnar Wolf • gwolf@gwolf.org • (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244