On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 01:31:40AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes: > > Le Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 12:47:44PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst a écrit : > > > I know it is fancy and modern to think that Debian native packages > > > should only be used for things that are specific to the Debian > > > infrastructure, but there is nothing in policy that requires that, > > To be clear (and I know you probably already know this): just because > some practice is not explicitly mentioned in Policy, does not mean there > is no good way to decide whether or not it's good practice. True. However, if something is not explicitly forbidden by Policy (and this isn't), and it does not cause (obvious) harm to Debian as a whole (which this doesn't), there is no good reason why people should pretend it's a bad idea. > As far as whether this idea is “modern”, I don't know whether “more than > 8 years” is outside that range for an operating system only 16 years > old, but the consensus on this 2001-01 ‘debian-mentors’ thread > <URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2001/01/msg00191.html> seems > to be that packages should be native only if the package is specific to > the Debian infrastructure. That thread has four people stating the downsides of making a package a native package; however, several of them also explicitly state the opinion that making a package native is perfectly okay, after having considered those downsides. That's pretty much what I was saying in my previous mail. As an aside, even if the thread did say something else, and with all due respect, I do not consider -mentors to be authoritative on such a subject. > > At least one of the consequences of being native is that the package > > gets all its gettext and manpages translations for free from Debian. > > Another one is that any change to the Debian packaging for the work > can't be released without bumping the version number of the work, even > when there's no other change in the work other than the Debian > packaging. That's all most certainly true. I never said that making a package of which one is both Debian and upstream maintainer a native package is a good idea in _all_ cases. Indeed, my own such package, the nbd utilities, is not a native package, precisely because I do not consider it to be a good idea in that specific case for many of the reasons mentioned. What I am saying is that there can be cases where making a package a native package can be the right thing to do, even if the functionality of the package has nothing to do with Debian infrastructure. That it should be the choice of the maintainer to be able to do so. That deciding whether or not something should be a native package is the maintainer's prerogative, and nobody else's. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature