Re: Is tabular data in binary format acceptable for Debian ?
Le Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:10:25AM -0800, Don Armstrong a écrit :
>
> That may be what you're discussing, but I'm talking about why it's
> unreasonable to expect the ftpmasters to know what a relatively
> specialized package's on-disk data format looks like, and in which
> cases it is a non-lossy transformation of the source, and in which
> cases it isn't.
> What you're discussing is entirely a non-issue, as far as I'm
> concerned, because a non-lossy transformation is just that.
This is also what I rant about. They do not know and asked, that is good. I
spent the time to provide detailed answers and they are ignored, that's bad.
Before the rejection there was no issue about the .Rdata files, and now they
are in the limbo because of the archive team's silence, since they are ruling
what is acceptable and what is not. As a maintainer of a package that contains
such files, this disturbs my work, because if there is an issue with their
fitness for the release, I prefer to know it in December rather than in
February, one month before the freeze.
> > On the other hand, I am sure that in Debian there are files that are
> > similar in spirit to your example.
>
> I'm certain as well, but I file bugs when I find them.
I am not filing bugs for all the defective packages I found, for instance:
- Works distributed under the Artistic-2.0 license, but the license is not
included in debian/copyright.
- Works distributed under the Apache-2.0 license, but the NOTICE file is not
redistributed in the binary packages.
- Packages that do not detail *all* copyright notices of the conventient copy
of the zlib that the upstream source contains but that is not used in
Debian. (As an experimentation I filed a bug on zlib itself. The issue was
solved by repackaging the upstream sources. That is an interesting approach,
but I am still strongly prefering to ship a bitwise identical original upstream
source tarball unless impossible.)
- Source packages that contain RSA's md5.h header, but its license is not
copied in debian/copyright.
I chose the above examples to show again that it is not possible to take
acceptance or rejection of packages to decide what is acceptable for Debian or
not. All the packages with the above defects went through the NEW queue.
So if we all agree that this tables in .Rdata format is a non-issue, why the
archive administrators – who are the ones who raised the question – are not
confirming that they agree with this, so that we can move on more important
subjects?
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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