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Re: Debian vs. Ubuntu source control file



Am Dienstag, den 05.01.2010, 10:36 +0100 schrieb Xavier Roche:
> [ Don't hesitate to redirect me to an already discussed 
> solution/thread/FAQ/anything if necessary, but I didn't find anything 
> related in recent (months) debian-devel. ]
> 
> Hi folks (and happy new year to all DD),
> 
> A minor issue (reported by Nick Ellery) with debian vs. ubuntu package 
> is that the two package namespaces are not necessarily identical. An 
> example is my httrack package, which on Ubuntu depends alternatively on 
> abrowser, which is NOT in debian.
> 
> See BUG 530031 :
> <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=530031>
> 
> I could depend on abrowser on Debian, but the package doesn't exist, and 
> lintian may be a bit annoyed. Besides, we may package in the future 
> something called abrowser, which wouldn't be the same package (is that 
> possible ? do we enforce "two different packages on debian/ubuntu should 
> not have the same name" -- sorry if I am beating a dead horse)
> 
> This is the only reason why a patch is needed for all releases on 
> ubuntu. The patch (<http://patches.ubuntu.com/h/httrack/>) is basically 
> a one-liner in the control file (plus changelog and friends):
> 
> -Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, webhttrack-common, iceape-browser | 
> iceweasel | mozilla | firefox | mozilla-firefox | www-browser
> +Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, webhttrack-common, iceape-browser | 
> iceweasel | mozilla | firefox | abrowser | mozilla-firefox | www-browser
> 
> What do you, folks, think of this case ?

I have the same issue with e.g. gnome-chemistry-utils. Further Ubuntu
applies a few patches related to their build system in e.g. gnupg or for
their design decisions (gelemental dbg package).

On one side I think: Well, they decided to do things their own way, so
they have carry about fixing my packaging files for their build and
package environment. On the other side it would be of course easier, if
such changes, which will always be applied to Ubuntu only, could be
marked/added somehow to the Debian package. I hope, they time savings
are then spent into *fixing bugs reported to launchpad and reporting
fixes back to us* (my dear Ubuntu developers!!111).

[snip the possible solutions]
I was thinking about similar things.

Maybe the source format v3 is the solution if we can mark changes as
patch-in-debian and patch-in-ubuntu only?

Regards, Daniel


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