Re: dgit and upstream git repos

[Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de>]

Hi,

Ian Jackson:
> On `source code': I think everyone should have the same definition of
> `source code' for git as for tarballs.
> 
I beg to differ. Not in principle, but because tarballs and git trees
target different groups of users.

I expect people who use my git trees to have a reasonably-recent system
which has a reasonably-current copy of autotools installed.

I expect no such thing from people who download a tarball onto CentOS 5
(or Solaris for that matter). They want "sh ./configure && make" to
work. (So do I, if/when I download a tarball, for that matter.)

The source code, as in "the thing I work with when I want to change
the behavior of the program", is the git archive. It's not the tarball,
and it's empharically not anything produced by autotools.
(I really really don't like cluttering git trees with non-source.)

I no longer regard tarballs as "source", strictly speaking. They're an
inconvenient (to me) way to package a bunch of files that can be used
to produce+install an executable.

-- 
-- Matthias Urlichs