Why?: Two hello- packages
Greetings: God bless you.
Having a aspiration to contribute back to the Debian project
by becoming a developer, adopting an orphaned package or two,
such as xmailtool, I'm trying to work through building from
gotten sources, and find myself with some missing bits of
understanding as to exactly how a *.diff.gz is applied
to the corresponding *.orig.tar.gz. I've tried various
combinations of current working directories with
zcat name.diff.gz | patch, and getting missing file
errors on files that I can plainly see.
Anyway, I thought "I guess I need to pour through the
manuals again, and more closely this time...", and, in
response to the challenge in _Debian_Developer's_Reference_,
chapter 2.1: "studied the hello source enough, buddy? :/",
I ftp'ed from
ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/source/devel
the hello* files.
So to my question: why are there two different names
for the hello package files, when, apparently, there is
only a version difference:
5095 hello-debhelper_1.3-17.diff.gz
643 hello-debhelper_1.3-17.dsc
87701 hello-debhelper_1.3.orig.tar.gz
4946 hello_1.3-16.diff.gz
605 hello_1.3-16.dsc
87701 hello_1.3.orig.tar.gz
(Yeah, I know: I could have used dselect, but
I momentarily forgot that... I actually used
dselect to fetch it for my system at home...)
BTW, I suspect I'll find my answers on patching
by rereading the _Debian_Packaging_Manual_. But
if any mentoring elder developer feels abject pity
on a poor clue-challenged newbie wannabe,
and deigns to drop me a bone, that'll be
good, too :!
In other matters, in reading the docs with xmailtool,
I find that the authors are not actively maintaining
the source, and do not find any site mentioning
anyone else who is, so I've assayed to also become
the upstream maintainer, and have sent a notice
of intent to the authors, at the last known email
address, and have started a page at
http://www.koyote.com/users/bolan/xmailtool .
Is this correct method? Or "way" too presumptious,
having skipped some proper steps?
Reply to: