On 03/03/2013 10:35 PM, Cristian Ionescu-Idbohrn wrote:
On Sun, 3 Mar 2013, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:The license issue was just an example (hence the braces). The reasoning is that the Debian packaging is supposed to be independent of upstream, especially since we cannot always follow upstream, during a freeze, for example. Assume we have version 3.0 in Debian and upstream has 3.5 and we're frozen. During the freeze, someone discovers a nasty bug in subsurface which is considered RC (release critical) in Debian, but gets fixed in 3.5.1 upstream.What about upstream keeping stuff on release branches (3.0, 3.0.2, 3.5, and so on)? And doing that sort of backporting patches themselfs? How much would that help with packaging?
Yes, but that would always mean Debian somehow depends on upstream which is not really a desired situation. As I said, we cannot always keep up with upstream for various reasons. Debian-specific changes through patches are not uncommon and it doesn't always make sense to adopt the changes upstream.
Debian packaging should only be part of the upstream repository if the package is Debian-native, e.g. it has its origin in Debian. Like dpkg or apt, for example. You can recognize these packages from the missing -n (n being a natural numner) in the version number.
I am aware that you could probably avoid this problem with branches, but I think it would just make things difficult. Debian cannot simply be up-to-date with upstream and thus upstream shouldn't maintain the Debian-specific part.Alright. Package maintenence stuff separated from upstream source stuff. Did I get that right?
I'd recommend that, yes.As for the current situation, I'd recommend getting the current upstream version of subsurface ready for Debian and have it uploaded into experimental.
Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913