Re: NMUs: Do we want to Require or Recommend DH

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

I think there's a fairly clear consensus emerging that it's worth having
things to check when making a build system conversion.  Looking at
debdiff, ditherscope and reproducibility of the build all appear to be
important things to consider in such a case.

So, I think there is an emerging consensus against the idea of people
NMUing a package simply to convert it to dh.

First, I'd like to explicitly call for any last comments from people who would
like to see us permit NMUs simply to move packages toward dh.  Are there
any cases in which such an NMU should be permitted?

Finally, I'd like to focus discussion on an area where emerging
consensus is much less clear.

How do we feel about people making build system conversions when those
conversion make it easier to fix some other bug that they are fixing as
part of an NMU?
That is, imagine that a package is mishandling the combination of
systemd units and an init script.  As someone preparing an NMU, is it
reasonable to move to dh compat 12 from some other build system if I
believe doing so will make it easier for me to fix the bug and verify
the fix?

--Sam