Packaging releases without a tarball (sometimes)
Hello,
I am having trouble with my package jquery-jplayer (a _javascript_ library with Flash fallback) and I would like to ask for advice on how to proceed
Patch releases are NOT available as zip files and the list of wrongdoings is long:
- Patch releases are only available from the git repository
- There are no git tags for patch releases
- There are no branches for different major/minor releases and patch releases: everything goes into master
- Patch releases do not contain only fixes but they also usually contain new features
- The commit message rarely contains a reference to "new patch release", I need to read the diffs to know what's going on
- The file hierarchy and organization of the git repository are different to what you can find inside the zip file for major and minor releases
- The git repository contains the compiled Flash files and image files (the source zip does not)
I have tried to convince upstream to make zip files available for patch releases. No results.
When packaging patch releases, I'm not really sure which approach I should take:
1) Take the latest major/minor release (e. g. 2.3.0) and add a big patch with all the changes till the patch release I am packaging (e. g. 2.3.2)
Advantage: no changes required to the rules
Problem: the .orig.tar.gz is still 2.3.0, therefore I cannot use 2.3.2-1 as the package version but resort to something as 2.3.0-2 and say "this is actually 2.3.2" in the changelog text
2) Package minor releases as non-tarball upstream by git export'ing and sanitizing the proper commit
Advantage: I can use the right package version (2.3.2-1)
Problem: the packaging (rules, watch, etc) is different for patch releases and for non-patch releases
3) Ignore upstream's zip files for major/minor releases and package all versions as non-tarball upstreams by git export'ing and sanitizing the proper commit/tag
Advantage: always the same packaging, always the right version
Problem: ignoring upstream's zip files (is this a real problem?)
I cannot be the only one suffering from this kind of problems. What have others done in the past?
Thank you
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