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Re: Ignoramus' Guide to Deb-Make



Igor Grobman <igor@digicron.com> writes:

> Christian Leutloff wrote:
> > 
> > Igor Grobman <igor@digicron.com> writes:
> > 
> > > Christian Leutloff wrote:
> > > > Will Lowe <harpo@udel.edu> writes:
> 
> > > Here, I strongly disagree.  First, let me say that I was debmake fan in my 
> > > time :-).  I, too, couldn't see what people could possibly have against it.  
> > > It makes things so  much easier!  That it does, but it hides  what it is that 
> > > it is doing.  We pride ourselves on the fact that debian packages can be 
> > > handled using standard *nix tools.  Well, with the introduction of debstd and 
> > > debhelper[1], we have made our packages depend on our own special tools.   
> > 
> > They're only shell scripts. You can use and compile the whole package without the
> > rules file. Only for making the package again you have to install
> > more shell scripts. No porting is needed. Where's the problem?? 
> >
> 
> The problem is that by design, the rules was supposed to be a simple makefile 
> where you could easily see what's being done.  The scripts hide that.  Don't 
> forget that we are talking about commands like cp, mv, install and gzip, not 
> some obscure commands noone knows about.   

oh, come on. Look at the names of the following shell scripts:

dh_builddeb           dh_installchangelogs  dh_installmanpages    dh_suidregister
dh_clean              dh_installcron        dh_installmenu        dh_testdir
dh_compress           dh_installdebfiles    dh_makeshlibs         dh_testroot
dh_du                 dh_installdocs        dh_md5sums            dh_undocumented
dh_fixperms           dh_installexamples    dh_strip              

now, tell me, where you can't estimate what they are doing.

> > I don't *want* to know that! I only want a package that fits well in the
> > Debian system with minimal extra effort.
 
> *sigh*.  You will want to know that when you get bugs against your package.  
> IMO, debugging is much easier without debstd.  While we are on the topic of 
> debugging... These tools change often, so building the same package with 
> different versions of the tool can produce completely different  packages. If 
> someone ever files a bug against your source package, and it's related to the 
> fact that different debstd versions were used, how long is it going to take 
> you to find that out? 

If've never seen a bug against a source-package. This can only be
solved with source-depends. What I've the bug is reported with a wrong
compiler. 



We both show that there are different preffered ways of doing
things. We should left the decision to the each maintainer and tell
him the principel difference between the two approaches. What he
agains and what he has to pay for it. We're developing free software
and so we should provide each maintainer with the freedom to choose
his tools.

Yours
    Christian

-- 
Christian Leutloff, Aachen, Germany
  leutloff@sundancer.oche.de  http://www.oche.de/~leutloff/

Debian GNU/Linux 1.3.1! Mehr unter http://www.de.debian.org/

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