Re: devref and policy should agree on where to document tarball repacking

[Thibaut Paumard <mlotpot.news@free.fr>]

Le 17 déc. 09 à 17:28, Steve Langasek a écrit :

> Package: developers-reference
> Version: 3.4.3
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 04:45:33PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
>
> > > while checking the section 6.7.8.2 of the Developers reference
> > > (“Repackaged upstream source”) in the context on another thread on  
> > > this
> > > list
> > > ([🔎] d921045c2e3ae5ecfba088e9d82eb2c6@drazzib.com">http://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/[🔎] d921045c2e3ae5ecfba088e9d82eb2c6@drazzib.com 
> > > ),
> > > I found the following :
>
> > >  A repackaged .orig.tar.gz
>
> > >     1. should be documented in the resulting source package.  
> > > Detailed
> > >     information on how the repackaged source was obtained, and on  
> > > how
> > >     this can be reproduced should be provided in debian/copyright.  
> > > It
> > >     is also a good idea to provide a get-orig-source target in your
> > >     debian/rules file that repeats the process, as described in the
> > >     Policy Manual, Main building script: debian/rules.
>
> [...]
> I have a slight, but not overwhelming, preference for having this in
> README.source rather than in debian/copyright;

Hi,

I believe this belongs in copyright. This is based on two  
considerations:

1) debian/copyright is (should be) the central repository for legal  
information for the source package as well as for all the binary  
packages it builds;

2) most free licenses require to clearly specify modifications to  
licensed work. Deleting files is to be considered a modification of  
the source package, which _is_ the licensed work.

By the same token, I am starting to realise that we should also  
certainly specify in debian/copyright that some files have been  
patched. If using a patch system, the files are not modified in the  
source package, but still the binary packages are built with or even  
ship modified files. Also the details of the modifications belong  
elsewhere, I think debian/copyright should clearly state that our  
package is derived work, not the original, unmodified work.

What is not clear to me is whether we need to list all the files that  
are modified (or removed), or whether a generic "this work may have  
been modified prior to inclusion in Debian" is sufficient (in debian/ 
copyright).

Best regards, Thibaut.