Re: What can Debian do to provide complex applications to its users?
On Mon, 19 Feb 2018, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Raphael Hertzog, on lun. 19 févr. 2018 15:19:59 +0100, wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Feb 2018, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) wrote:
> > > > - we could relax our requirements and have a way to document the
> > > > limitations of those packages (wrt our usual policies)
> > >
> > > Which requirements are you referring to? If it's relaxing the need for
> > > source for minified javascript, then no thanks.
> >
> > Instead of requiring the source to be provided in the source package as a
> > non-minified file, we could require the packager to document in
> > debian/README.source where the upstream sources actually are.
>
> But what if that upstream website goes down? We don't have the source
> any more. Better at least keep a copy of the tarball.
Sure. But as a packager, I don't want to have to do this manually. So
one possible idea might be to extend our copyright file format. We should
be able to put there the URL for the sources of something that has been
embedded in the application and some debian.org service would ensure that
we keep a publicly-accessible copy of all those sources for as long as we
want them.
BTW we could also rely on our copyright file to document the fact that we
have vendored copies of some software.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
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