Re: New source package formats now available

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

> Le Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 08:17:17AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
>> 
>> I can add a new option "--no-debian-patch" that would refuse to create the
>> automatic quilt patch debian-changes-<ver> and make it fail instead if
>> there are upstream changes.
>
> Hi Raphaël,
>
> even simpler, an option or a format that would completely ignore what is
> outside the debian directory:
>
>  - When packing a source package, a compressed tar archive would be made from
>    the contents of the debian directory.
>
>  - When unpacking a source package, the compressed debian tar archive would be
>    unpacked in the upstream sources, after deleting any existing debian
>    directory.
>
> As it is already the case with Format 1.0 when the maintainer took care of
> having a diff.gz file that only contains files within the debian directory, the
> packaging system would not patch or unpatch the upstream sources, leaving this
> task to the maintainer.
>
> Have a nice day,

With one HUGE difference.

When someone (e.g. an NMUer) does edit an upstream file and builds the
package then the source do not contain those changes while the binary
will. That is clearly going to cause no end of pains.

Building the source package and unpacking it should always result in
the same source tree or fail to build in the first place. Simply
ignoring changes is too dangerous.

MfG
        Goswin