Re: dput: Call for feedback: What should change? What should stay the same?

[Afif Elghraoui <afif@debian.org>]

Hi, Ben,

على الثلاثاء 27 كانون الأول 2016 ‫20:31، كتب Ben Finney:
> Howdy all,
> 
> I recently donned the mantle of maintaining ‘dput’ and am carefully
> making improvements. I am conscious of the special need for backward
> compatibility so I am taking care to understand how the Debian developer
> community uses it today.
> 

Many thanks for soliciting users' perspectives. I think this isn't done
as often as it should be, so I very much appreciate it.

> So I'm now familiar enough, but still fresh enough, that feedback from
> people with different experiences is particularly valuable.
> 
> 
> What does ‘dput’ do that you think really should not be changed?
> 
> What does ‘dput’ do that you wish it would stop doing?
> 
> What do other tools do better than ‘dput’? Do you think that ‘dput’
> should change to do those tasks the same way?
> 
> 
> The same questions can be asked of the ‘dcut’ program from the same
> package.
> 
> The ‘dput-ng’ package is one alternative that is sometimes suggested
> when people hit the limits in ‘dput’. I am not a user of ‘dput-ng’ or
> other alternatives, so am also seeking feedback from people who have
> informed positions on choosing one over the other.
> 

I always have to use dput-ng in order to be able to use the dcut dm
command and grant DMs upload permissions. That works well, but the dput
command from dput-ng does some spurious checks that fail and I've never
found worth the time to investigate. What I end up doing (since it
doesn't happen very frequently) is switching back to plain dput, which
simply does the job. If I ever have to grant upload permissions, I
install dput-ng, do the dcut dm, then install plain dput again.

So as far as I'm concerned, if the dput package had a dcut that supports
the dm subcommand, I'd be very happy.

Thanks and regards
Afif

-- 
Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
http://afif.ghraoui.name