usacn enhancement take 2: --repack-compression (Was: [proposal] use xz compression for Debian package by default)

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

Hi,

as you might have noticed I implemented some way to teach uscan
excluding certain files from upstream tarball to make it dfsg compatible
(see bug #685787).  In the previous discussion about this also the topic
of compression came up[1].  I have the following proposal:  Add an option

   --repack-compression <compression>

to uscan which works as follows:

  1. If (and only if) there is some reason for repackaging (which
     could be given by --repack or mentioning Files-Excluded field
     in debian/copyright) the mentioned compression method is used.
     (in other words: --repack-compression will be ignored if there
     is no reason to touch the tarball)

  2. compression could be either gz, bz2 or xz (feel free to propose
     others)  The repackaging is done using

       tar -c --auto-compress -f <pkg>_<version>.orig.tar.<compression>

     (so if you propose other compression methods please make sure
     these are working with tar's --auto-compress option.)

  3. Given the fact that this option would give a chance to change
     the compression method I'm tempted to change the default
     compression method for --repack (and Files-Excluded) to xz.
     I'm aware that this is a change of the known behaviour of
     --repack but that's the reason why I'm posting in this thread
     which is proposing to change some defaults.  You can restore
     the old behaviour by

        uscan --repack --repack-compression gz

  4. I do not regard a configuration variable for
     /etc/devscripts.conf as a good idea because running uscan on
     different computers should end up in a comparable result
     independently from local configuration (feel free to prove me
     wrong here)

  5. If the repackaging is done because of Files-Excluded some
     uscan tries to undirty the tarball because this makes somehow
     sense and we are breaking MD5 sum compatibility anyway.  Do
     you think this undirtying should also be tried when only using
     --repack option?

BTW, I'd be happy if more people would test the removal using
Files-Excluded with the new uscan which is available in Git[2].

Kind regards

       Andreas.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00402.html
[2] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=users/tille/devscripts.git;a=blob;f=scripts/uscan.pl;hb=HEAD

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