Re: Remove build-cruft from debian-edu src:package

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Mike Gabriel]
> Hi Petter,
> 
> I have just added MATE support to the debian-edu src:package.
> 
> While looking at that package a bit close, I realized that the code
> contains some build cruft files:
> 
>   debian-edu-task.desc
>   debian/control (generated from debian/control.stub)
>   (maybe more?)
> 
> To my view those should be removed from debian-edu.git. The way to
> re-generate them is nicely described in debian/README.source, so
> that should be sufficient.
> 
> Can you give feedback, if removing those files would break anything?

These files are generated, but not from the package content, but from
the dynamic Debian archive content.  These files are in git to be able
to know exactly which set of packages were present in the archive at a
given moment, and which set of packages were used when the package was
uploaded.  There is no way to recreate this information after the
fact, and I thus believe it would be a mistake to remove these files
from git.

As far as I know, nothing would break if we remove these files from
git, but I advice against it.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen