* Francesco Paolo Lovergine (frankie@debian.org) wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 09:24:58PM +0100, Fabio Tranchitella wrote:
> > I've just realized that the postgis unstable package is terribly
> > outdated and buggy. After re-packaging it for using with postgresql
> > 8.1 on my machine, I discovered that inside the pkg-grass repository
> > the package is already in a good shape.
> >
> > Is there a reason why the package in unstable is so outdated?
>
> There's a pending upload in NEW. Someone does not think it's in so
> good shape :) but it could be approved in a few...
It's not in good shape, to say the least. I've spoken with Alex about
this in the past and am trying to encourage him to fix the problems with
the new packaging. At the very least:
* The PostGIS module name should be postgresql-X.Y-postgis where X.Y
corresponds to the PostgreSQL version.
* The utilities shipped with PostGIS are not dependent on the version
of PostgreSQL and therefore there should not be multiple binary
packages for the utilities.
* PostGIS should not be building packages for 8.0 or really for 7.4.
8.0 is being phased out of Debian/unstable and will be gone prior to
the etch release. 7.4 only remains so that a sane transistion can
be done from sarge. PostGIS doesn't exist in sarge and so there's
no need for this.
* PostGIS should not be including multiple different major versions of
the PostGIS source code and shouldn't be building old major versions
using the same source package. This is essentially insane. If we
need multiple major versions of PostGIS in Debian then they should
be built from different source packages (hint: We *don't* need, or
want multiple major versions of PostGIS in Debian especially since
the it looks like the older version only works w/ 7.4 anyway)
* The build system for PostGIS absolutely sucks and causes problems
for anyone else (build daemon or other) trying to rebuild it. This
results in FTBFS bugs which are release-critical. No package with
such issues should be uploaded to the archive.
The PostGIS package was rejected (aiui) due to #2 and #3 above but I
don't believe fixing just those would allow it to get through or would
be in anyone's best interest. I've packaged PostGIS myself using CDBS
for 8.1 and it went quite decently and works pretty well. I'm happy
enough if Alex fixes the issues with the packaging though.
Thanks,
Stephen
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