Re: Bug#592839: dpkg-source option to remove files on unpack: debian/source/remove-files
On 18/08/10 09:29, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> David Claughton <dave@eclecticdave.com> writes:
>
>> On 13/08/10 17:58, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>> Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> As suggested by Ian on -devel (see attachment), it would be nice to have
>>>> a way to remove files during unpack of a source package to hide non-free
>>>> files from our users without stripping them from the original tarball.
>>>
>>>> I also prefer this approach over repacking upstream files so let's
>>>> implement this feature.
>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure ftp-master isn't going to allow source packages with
>>> non-free content in the main archive regardless of whether that content is
>>> hidden on unpack (I certainly wouldn't if I were them), so implementing
>>> this is kind of pointless for Debian.
>>>
>>
>> Another use-case might be to remove "convenience copies" of system
>> libraries. Might be useful (e.g. for security reasons) to be able to
>> guarantee that this code isn't being accidentally used by a build (in a
>> way that can be easily checked by a script).
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> David.
>
> And I ask again: How does that differ from deleting them in
> debian/rules?
Sure you could do that. What that doesn't give you (which I think is
useful) is a way to easily script a check that this code is not being used.
For example, around the time I adopted graphviz, there was a MBF against
40+ packages asking people to check that these packages were not using
the embedded copy of libltdl (#559812 was the graphviz one FWIW). It
would have been significantly more efficient if there were a way to
check this automatically.
>
> Legally that should be the same. And practically you would have the
> useless files on the initial source unpack but they would be gone when
> debian/rules is invoked the first time. dpkg-source -x could run the
> clean target by default to make the files disapear directly.
Well it wasn't my intention to address the original use case of non-free
files. But to an extent the same argument applies - if FTP Masters were
to allow this (and as Russ says, it's a big IF) - I would imagine they
would want a way to ensure that you really were deleting the files, and
I don't expect they would want to check debian/rules in every upload for
appropriate 'rm' commands.
Cheers,
David.
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