Hi Eugene.
Welcome to the Debian world! :-)
On 22/12/2010 17:47, Eugene Kirpichov wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I've uploaded my first debian package to debian mentors:
> http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/h/haskell-strptime
>
> Looks like now I understand how it is done at least for libraries
> (though I'd appreciate if someone criticized the packaging) and I
> could also package the other dependencies for my apps.
While your package seems to build correctly and produce a usable
package, there are some issues in it that make it totally unsuitable for
Debian at the moment. Don't worry, all of these issues can be addressed
and are not particularly difficult! :-)
This is a first list of things, as they come in my mind.
* debian/control: first of all, descriptions are clearly incomplete;
while the first line is mostly ok, the extended description doesn't give
any information about what does the package do. In Debian the
description "should describe the package (the program) to a user (system
administrator) who has never met it before so that they have enough
information to decide whether they want to install it"[1]. Please, read
this link carefully and rephrase the description to make it more
informative. Moreover, as Erik pointed out, there's no need to separate
the first line from the extended description with an empty line.
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#s-descriptions
* debian/control: build dependencies seem to be insufficient; you
should at least add ghc6-doc, which is needed to build the -doc package;
it should go in Build-Depends-Indep, because it is needed just for
architecture-independent binary packages. See [2] for more information.
[2]
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s-sourcebinarydeps
* debian/control: commented lines could be removed, there's no need to
keep them around; anyway, once you move your package into the darcs
repository, you should add the Vcs-Darcs and Vcs-Browser fields to
document this fact.
* debian/control: you should add the "Recommends:
${haskell:Recommends}" line to all the binary packages.
* debian/copyright: this file is not formatted according to the DEP 5
specification[3]. Please, read the link and fix the file. More
specifically, you're missing the "Files" field. Moreover, there are two
files (hstrptime.c and hstrptime.h) which are GPL-licensed and have
different copyright holders. The licenses are compatible, but the
copyright file must contain true information! :-)
[3] http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/
* debian/copyright: you should also split long lines, use dots (".") to
mark empty lines that shouldn't break a field and replace something
relevant on the marker "<ORGANIZATION>".
* debian/patches/*: you should remove the patch present in your
package; probably it fell there by mistake, but it just contains a copy
of the content of the original tarball.
> What should I do now? :) Should it somehow get to
> darcs.debian.org/pkg-haskell? Should I notify someone? etc.
Once the package is ready and clean, a Debian Developer (like me, or ay
other DD that reads this list) can upload it to the main Debian archive.
The package must wait some time in the NEW queue before it gets accepted
by FTP masters (the people responsible for the management of the Debian
archive); once it's accepted, your first package will be officially in
Debian.
In the meantime, I suggest you to maintain your package in the darcs
repository of our team. You should subscribe on alioth.debian.org and
request to join the project pkg-haskell. See [4,5] for information.
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/Haskell
[5] http://wiki.debian.org/Haskell/CollabMaint/DarcsBasic
Remember to check into darcs only the debian/ directory! :-) Have a look
to other packages to know how things work and ask here if you have any
troubles.
Cheers and merry Christmas (for those of you who live in countries where
this time is special!). :-)
Giovanni.
--
Giovanni Mascellani <mascellani@poisson.phc.unipi.it>
Pisa, Italy
Web: http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~mascellani
Jabber: g.mascellani@jabber.org / giovanni@elabor.homelinux.org
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