Hi Sean, Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes: > I think I am the person who first started doing this. With good git > workflows, the maintenance cost is low. When I've done it, I've removed > upstream instructions to avoid users thinking that there are any further > steps required to use the package; that could cause them to waste time. > I don't think the inconsistency to which you refer matters too much. I agree that the cost should be low in most cases. Though when upstream rewrites README, especially when upstream changes the structure (rarely, but still), a maintainer needs to adapt accordingly and sometimes it is not straightforward (e.g. php-elisp). Another of my concern is that this is not done for all addons (which was what I meant by inconsistently): some packages do this, some don't, and this could confuse users. I guess as the Emacsen policy doesn't require this maintainers are doing this on an ad-hoc basis. I think having a consistent way to provide Debian specific information will be more beneficial to both the users and maintainers, especially if this is done automatically to save maintainer time. Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes: > Hello, > > On Sat 10 May 2025 at 09:42pm -07, Xiyue Deng wrote: > >> As a preliminary thought, I think a better place to add Debian specific >> instruction is probably the README.Debian file, which is a natural place >> for Debian specific information, and avoids the previous mentioned >> downsides by not touching upstream files. > > I think that we ought to feel free to modify upstream files. That's one > of the things that makes Debian different from other distributions, > which latter prioritise minimising changes to upstream's code. > Ack. > README.Debian is the correct place for instructions that are essentially > Debian-specific, indeed. But then I think README ought to be patched to > contain a reference to README.Debian so the user knows to look there :) > As a Debian user, when I try to look at /usr/share/doc/<package>/ and find a README.Debian, I would think that should contain information specific to Debian, and README to be the one from upstream. I'm not sure whether other users think the same. I don't think whether to allow patching README conflicts with what I'm proposing. After all, patching README should be allowed for any fixes. I'm just thinking that if we want to provide Debian specific information, it's better to do it for all addons (which DDPO reports 346 packages as of now), and being able to do it automatically would be most cost efficient for maintainers. Also, if the Debian instruction changes (e.g. apt-get -> apt), it becomes a single point of fix. > I'd prefer not to install a README to /usr/share/doc at all, than to > leave it full of things that aren't relevant to Debian users. > I tend to agree, though I don't think upstream instruction is necessarily irrelevant to users. As an example (as I mentioned in Bug#1105004), if an addon in stable is too out-of-date and a newer version contains some features/bug fixes, and we don't have a backport, using ELPA to install the newer version could be the best option for stable users. > -- > Sean Whitton -- Regards, Xiyue Deng
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