On 11-Mar-2009, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Wed, Mar 11 2009, Ben Finney wrote: > > It's worth asking, then, what is the original purpose for which the > > ‘get-orig-source’ target specification was inserted into the policy? > > Indeed, the whole rationale for the target, and why it got into > policy, was for the secific cases where extended munging of upstream > had to be done, usually, but not restricted to, the cases where > upstream had DFSG violations and the upstream source could not be > allowed in the main section of the archive. […] > > This is not a trivial replacement for uscan watch file with a > version number in the regexp, which is the trivial way of implementing > the task of getting the current version from upstream). This target is > for the developers of munged sources to provide a script to munge the > latest sources. > > Keep in mind that sometimes an unmunged source will not build > with the debian/rules file in the archive; so it is not just a > matter of dropping in ./debian into the latest upstream tarball. > > That facility is being dropped silently, and I object to there > being no transition plan, and nothing to replace the functionality > currently provided by the target. This purpose isn't clear to me at all in the existing policy document; hence my (and presumably others) misunderstanding of its purpose and implementing a ‘get-orig-source’ target with a different purpose. > Ask me. There is institutional knowledge in the post of leading > the policy development for 10 years. And my memory is not that bad -- > yet, though doubtless senility encroaches. I would very much like to see a patch from you, submitted to this bug report, that re-works this policy section to more explicitly state the intent and purpose of the ‘get-orig-source’ target. -- \ “To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit | `\ defeat.” —Peter Sellers | _o__) | Ben Finney <ben@benfinney.id.au>
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