Re: policy regarding redistributable binary files in upstream tarballs
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
> But a growing number of upstreams disagree, so those upstreams are
> likely to be actively opposed to your recommendation to patches which
> remove non-source files from the VCS repository.
I wonder about the basis for that disagreement. I think perhaps it is
the fact that other platforms are vastly more popular than Debian and
most upstreams get used to the way things happen on those platforms
and model their development behaviour around that. My perception of
the difference between Debian and those platforms is that we want to
add everything (modulo human resources and other restrictions) to our
platform but other platforms have a strong line between what is in and
what is out. What is in is often effectively read-only for upstreams
but can they can usually depend on its existence, at least for a time.
Since the core is effectively read-only, upstreams can only work
around what is out by adding embedded code copies, not building from
source and so on.
There are compromises we can suggest also:
Putting all third-party libraries into a separate place (tarball,
repo, branch or dir).
Putting all pre-built files into a separate place (tarball, repo,
branch or dir).
> How to resolve that? I don't know. But it will entail a change of
> workflow, not merely patches submitted.
I think these problems are nothing new (but agree they are increasing)
and our existing strategies need to be strengthened. We need to
understand our upstreams point of view and advocate solutions that
work for both us and upstream. We need to advocate and communicate our
position more widely, strongly and effectively (UpstreamGuide etc). We
need to make it easier to work around upstreams when they aren't
willing to co-operate (Files-Excluded helps a lot here). We need to do
all that without getting hostile and without pushing too hard lest we
get hostility in return.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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