Re: Built-Using and Cython

[Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org>]

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi Nikolaus,
>
> Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>
>> If a debian package uses Cython in its build process, does it need to
>> declare Built-Using: cython?
>
> I don't think typical licenses require that, no.
>
> The policy text could use a lot of help in this area.  See
> http://bugs.debian.org/688251 if you have ideas for improving it.

I would like to help, but without knowing what it's *meant* to say, it's
pretty hard to come up with with an idea of how to say it :-).

Russ says that it's only necessary "there are licensing reasons", but
I'm not sure what that means. It seems that pretty much every open
source license requires you to make the source code available (including
Cython), so I'm not sure why e.g. in the above case it's not necessary.
I am compiling source code coming from the Cython binary package... so
if that package were gone, the generated package would be without
complete source.

Also, I was expecting that Built-Using would also be important to figure
out which packages need to be recompiled when there's e.g. a security
update of the binary package from which sources were included. Am I
mistaken about that?

Best,

   -Nikolaus

-- 
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