On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 04:37:25PM -0500, Carlo Segre wrote: > Hello All: > The definition of the contrib section of the archive reads [0] > Examples of packages which would be included in contrib are: > * free packages which require contrib, non-free packages or packages > which are not in our archive at all for compilation or execution, > There is apparently an ambiguity here since a contrib package can > depend on non-free in two distinct ways: No, there isn't. "for compilation or execution" - so if it depends on packages not in main at build time *or* at run time. > Which is the correct interpretation? If both are included, then all > buildds MUST include non-free sources. There is no such requirement. The buildd network has never assumed responsibility for building packages which build-depend on non-free packages. It's possible that most maintainers when confronted with this have simply opted to move their packages directly to non-free in order to get autobuilder support. There are only five packages in contrib currently affected by this problem (out of 74 total that build architecture-dependent packages): ifeffit and libpgplot-perl, which b-d on pgplot5; r-cran-surveillance, which b-d on r-cran-maptools; snes9express, which b-d on snes9x-x; and suitesparse-metis, which b-d on libparmetis-dev. (Two other packages have build-dependencies that are satisfied by main+contrib; and one other package has build-dependencies that aren't satisfied even with non-free.) > An alternative which would remove the inconsistency is to make the > decision that contrib packages will not be built by the officeial > buildd network but have to be built as non-free packages are, on the > unofficial buildd network. If my understanding is current, non-free packages are autobuilt only as a result of explicit whitelisting indicating that there are no license problems resulting from doing so. I think the same would have to be true of contrib packages, since even *installing* packages from non-free could have license implications that impact the buildd operators. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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