Upstream stopped to ship tar.gz file. What to do?
Hello,
Upstream of imms stopped to ship tar.gz file and ships only tar.bz2.
However, there is no new upstream release at the moment. The question is:
Shall I prepare new release of Debian package using tar.bz2 tarball?
There was a short discussion on #debian-devel, but there was no conclusion.
Possible answers are:
1. Definitely, if possible you shall keep the tarball the same as upstream
tarball (unless other concerns are involved, like, for example, DFSG
compliancy).
2. Absolutely not. Just stick to current tarball and switch when new upstream
release will be available.
3. This is the sole maintainer's decision.
BTW, I'm doing also other changes in the package. So, changing the tarball
is not an only purpose of new package release.
Pro:
To verify if tarball content is the same as upstream ones, one need to fetch
both tarballs, unpack them and verify the checksum of each file, instead of
just checking the checksum of whole tarballs. But this is not a strong
argument because it's a difference between a shell one liners and a single
run of md5sum/sha1sum.
Con:
It clutters the archive with exactly the same content but differently
packaged. A little more bandwidth and disc space usage (well, it's not even
a promile, I suppose).
The second question is: in case new tarball shall be uploaded what is the best
approach?
1. Create a new upstream version like 3.1.0~rc8+bz-1?
2. Just do next release of debian package: 3.1.0~rc8-3 but remember about
building the package with -sa option?
Best regards
Artur
Reply to: