Re: How to adopt a dead package?
On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 02:34:50PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jul 2019 23:11:46 +0500 Andrey Rahmatullin
> <wrar@debian.org> wrote:
> > > If I wanted to adopt the package and get it back into Debian, what
> > > would I need to do? I haven't been a package maintainer before. I
> > > presume there's a document somewhere I can read with detailed
> > > instructions?
> > Generic instructions: https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers
> > Reintroducing packages:
> > https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch05.en.html#reintroducing-pkgs
>
> Thank you!
Hey Perry,
Long time no chat!
Two things to highlight. First, bozohttpd has been out of Debian for
about 5 years, so it's worth taking a quick look through the upgrading
checklist in the Debian Policy document for changes since its list
Standards conformance claim, which is against version 3.9.3 (we're not
at version 4.4):
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.html
Secondly, one good thing is that the packaging for bozohttpd appears
to be very simple, if obsolete. And fortunately, debhelper compat
level 5 is deprecated, but it's at least still supported by modern
versions of debhelper (which is version 12; see the COMPATIBILITY
LEVELS section of the debhelper man page for more details).
The New Maintainer's Guide is going to give you examples using the new
recommended "dh" template, where the core of the debian/rules makefile
looks like this:
%:
dh $@
The last version of bozohttpd's debian/rules file runs explicit
debhelper commands, e.g.:
binary-arch: build install
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_installdocs
...
The developer's reference guide recommends using the existing
packaging when reintroducing a package. And that's probably good
advice, although it may cause some initial confusion when you read the
New Maintainer's Guide, since it assumes you are packaging a new
package, where there is no legacy packaging effort to use as a base.
That being said, it might be simpler to guarantee pacakging policy
complaince if you were to start from scratch; the primary files which
you'd like to pay special attention are the current
debian/{post,rm}{inst,rm} files.
Finally, if you need someone to help be a mentor and sponsor the
upload, or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me
off-line; I'd be happy to help.
Cheers,
- Ted
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