Re: Proposal: debian/include
Morten Kjeldgaard <mok@bioxray.au.dk> writes:
> On 05/09/2008, at 13.56, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>
>>> by adding to policy an optional file, debian/include, that explicitly
>>> lists what files/ directories outside of debian/ should be included
>>> in
>>> *.diff.gz. The format of that file should allow for comments
>>> explaining
>>> why those particular parts are needed in the diff.gz.
>>
>> This can already be done at run-time with the -i option of
>> dpkg-source. In the future, I'll probably give the possibility to
>> provide default command-line options in the source package within
>> the file
>> debian/source/build-options but I haven't implemented this yet.
>
> As far as I know, the -i option tells dpkg-source to ignore something,
> but what I propose is in fact the opposite... a list of what you want.
> Furthermore, the -i option only works for the person issuing the
> command. If someone else attempts to create a source package, that
> person may not use the -i switch. With a list in debian/include, it
> wouldn't matter how you invoke the tools to build the packge.
>
>> With the new format, if you have local changes, they will be
>> integrated in the
>> quilt serie as a new patch and the patch will be automatically named
>> by dpkg-source. lintian will probably (one day) warn about such
>> patches
>> because when you modify the upstream sources, you must have a good
>> reason
>> to do it and thus you should be able to give a proper name to the
>> patch
>> and describe it instead of just letting dpkg-source record the change.
>
> I appreciate that this can be a useful feature, but it does not really
> change the situation where you end up with a bunch of undesired
> patches because of things you have done to the source tree. It only
> changes _where_ those patches appear, but you still need to fix the
> source tree so they are not built.
>
> The advantage of the debian/include file is that the packager is
> completely in control of what goes into diff.gz (or quilt patches, for
> that matter), namely nothing if the file is empty. And this
> information would remain with the source package.
You are attcking this from the wrong side.
By specifying what should be included you make it verry easy to forget
stuff.
What you should do is specify what should be excluded. That way new
stuff will automatically be included and only stuff you know to be bad
is left out.
>> Feel free to give a try to the new format and see if there are
>> other things that can be improved to resolve your concerns.
>
> I am certainly interested in learning more about the new format!
>
> Cheers,
> Morten
There are only 2 reasons to not have something in the patch
automatically:
1) RCS infos that you have locally but are not to be part of the Debian
source (are not part of the source at all).
2) You do not clean up properly in debian/rules clean.
For 1 it would be nice to specify a default -i/-I option for
dpkg-source inside the debian source (as Raphael described). But 2
should be fixed to clean up properly and not worked around by
including/excluding.
MfG
Goswin
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