Gergely Nagy <algernon@balabit.hu> writes: ... > We have tools that make it easy to create upstream tarballs from an SCM > repo. Git has git archive, gitpkg and possibly other tools make it very > easy to create upstream tarballs: so much so, that it means nothing more > than tagging the repo properly. > > I've been using this for quite a while for some of my packages (ivykis, > libmongo-client), and it doesn't need neither an upstream build system, > nor much thought once it is set up. (And setup is fairly trivial too) So to summarise your argument appears to be that it sets a bad example (which is only a valid criticism if you manage to show why it's a bad idea in the first place) and that you don't like people not using all the same tools you use. If the person doing the packaging is the upstream, you're asking them to pretend to be two people, and decide when a patch is debian specific or not, and then learn a load of tools that they have no use for in order to keep their personality neatly split. I know a couple of upstreams who use native packages for their stuff, and I'm pretty sure one or both of them would give up if we insisted that they add unnecessary and confusing extra steps to their workflow. Currently they just incorporate the debian directory into their tree, add a couple of steps to their release Makefile target, and whenever they release a new version, it's ready for Debian too. Another example is Joey Hess (I know that ikiwiki is native, so is git-annex, as are (IIRC) some others of his -- feel free to look them up). You're going to have to do a lot better than saying that you don't like it very much if you're going to convince me that Joey's mistaken in that choice -- particularly since he comes up with pretty decent arguments in the opposite direction -- see his answer here: http://ask.debian.net/questions/does-native-package-needs-to-be-debian-specific-if-upstrean-author-is-a-mantainer Cheers, Phil. P.S. that answer from Joey took me seconds to find -- I find it astonishing that some people in this thread seem to be starting from their assumption that it is a hard-and-fast about native packages being exclusive to Debian, and proceeding straight to trying to stop the naughty transgressors without doing a moment's fact checking first, or even bothering to come up with a cogent argument to justify their assumption. Certainly there seems to have been no acknowledgement that there are good examples available that break that rule. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that one will be able to point to examples where the package clearly should not be native, but that doesn't tell one much about the general case -- this thread seems to boil down to: Look, here's a bad thing, therefore all things are bad. I'm sure we could be spending our time more productively. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND
Attachment:
pgp0pS1xGDypI.pgp
Description: PGP signature