Re: No native packages?
]] Russ Allbery
> Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no> writes:
> > ]] Gergely Nagy
>
> >> No, not really. I don't really care what tools one uses, as long as the
> >> result is reasonably easy *and* reliable to work with. Since VCS can be
> >> stale, and quite often does not include neither NMUs, nor backports,
> >> that fails the reliable requirement.
>
> > It sounds like you are arguing that we should just ship the the
> > repository in the source package, then. No chance of it ever getting
> > out of date, trivial to find the merge points and missing patches
> > between two packages and fits much better with a VCS-driven workflow.
>
> Yes, many of us would like that, which is why it's been repeatedly
> discussed at Debconfs, but no one has come up with a good solution to the
> fact that this requires reviewing the entire VCS archive for DFSG-freeness
> and rewriting history if any non-free code is ever introduced in it.
I wasn't trying to imply that my idea was new. :-) Yes, this is a lot of
work, and I'm not sure what the best way to go about it would be. On
the other hand, I think we're not actually shipping the real source if
we're not shipping that metadata. The most useful definition of source
I've seen is the «preferred format for modification» one, and if we need
or prefer something outside the source package to do useful things with
it (such as looking at what patches are applied, who wrote them and
when), the source package is not the real source.
--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
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