Aw: Re: Microbiomeutil and chimeraslayer as dependency of Qiime

["Steffen Möller" <steffen_moeller@gmx.de>]

Hi Andreas, hi Tim,

This is a fantastic thread, with constructive suggestions blossoming everywhere. Hm. Ok. Just like always in Debian Med. 
Anyway, here comes my attempt to contribute.
[...]
> 
> ITP bug filed and lintian warnings cleaned except for
> latest-debian-changelog-entry-without-new-version.  While in the first
> moment I was thinking there is no need to care I now wonder whether it
> might have some effect on Ubuntu / BioLinux users.  If I might leave the
> lower version it might happen that these users just do not "see" the new
> version.  The only way to fix this would be to use an epoch.  In
> general:  If you release packages somewhere outside of Debian you are
> well advised to use <version>-0<something> instead of
> <version>-1<something> or also <version>~-1<something> might do to
> avoid this type of complication.  I wonder whether you consider this
> a real problem and I should upload the package as

The current SVN changelog reads

microbiomeutil (20101212-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
  * Initial release to Debian (Closes: #711086)

for what Andreas nicely crafted. My suggestion is to
just slightly violate conventions and not upload a -1
to Debian but change to

microbiomeutil (20101212-2) unstable; urgency=low

which would not have the source tree uploaded to the
servers, which again could be fixed by adding a -sa
to the svn-buildpackage command. This way, we would
not need to modify the epoch. We all do not like
working with epochs, I presume. I volunteer "sponsoring" 
the upload, if you would want me to.

That said, I also want to support Andreas with his
suggestions on how we could have the BioLinux-early-direct
submissions versions avoid such hickups. Besides what
Andreas suggested, or better, giving an example for the
us of the tilde he mentioned, I would also like to point
to the backports.debian.org page on packaging instructions
at http://backports.debian.org/Contribute/#index5h3
I have just went through this for BOINC, but this is
something for another thread, I presume.

Cheers,

Steffen