Re: New source package formats now available
Le Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 02:28:26PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> Obviously, we don't want to have many formats in the archive and it's best
> if "3.0 (quilt)" is flexible enough so that we don't have to invent many
> other formats.
Le Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 02:49:39PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> Unpacking should be under control of the unpacker and
> not under control of the one who crafted the source package.
I think that this is a monopolist point of view:
- You have two different softwares (a packaging software and a patch
management software) and you bundle them together so that people who would
like the former must also use the latter.
- You present the removal of a feature like a costly solution (like when
people were asked to pay an extra if they do not want to use Windows on their
new PC).
- You plan to break backward compatibility to force users to upgrade, by
making 3.0 the default before it is widely adopted. Remember this each time
you get a .docx document that you can not open.
- You try to hijack the directory where your competitors are doing their work
(debian/patches), by applying quilt patches that were not made for the
format 3.0 (and sometimes fail).
Your design decisions make the format ‘3.0 (quilt)’ not particularly useful for
the maintainers who already implemented a workflow based on a VCS and a patch
management system (or a VCS that does both). Worse, it seems that it creates
problems when one wants to keep the patch and unpatch targets in debian/rules.
I would be interested in the other improvements, namely the possibility to use
.tar.bz2 original upstream sources, and the possibiltiy to store the debian
directory in a tar archive, but I can also keep on working with format 1.0 as
before.
Last question: is the use of the Format field in debian/control deprecated, or
can I use it for the packages that I would like to stay in the format 1.0?
Cheers,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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