Re: Debian native package?
Chris Danis <screechco@home.com> wrote:
>What exactly is a Debian-native package? I've seen definitions from "a
>package with no upstream source" to "written especially for Debian,"
>which seem kind of orthogonal to me. Here's my situation:
>
>I'm in the NM queue, currently packaging tclbabel, a piece of software
>I have written myself. Because I am both upstream and possibly Debian
>maintainer, should this be such a native package?
Aside from what everybody else has said, it's also worth considering
that - especially if it's not specific to Debian, which it doesn't sound
like it is - at some point in the future you might decide to hand the
packaging off to someone else. At that point, it's good to have had the
packaging separate from the start.
A lot of people don't like keeping debian/ directories in upstream CVS
for this reason. For example, I have CVS write access upstream for two
of the packages I maintain, but I prefer to keep debian/ out of that for
a reason that might be best described as "separation of powers". There
are a few packages in the distribution with a debian/ directory in the
.orig.tar.gz and then a diff to *that* in the .diff.gz - I think it ends
up being pretty messy.
Sometimes it can be an ease of management issue. Lots of work has gone
into making it very easy to make releases of Debian packages, so in the
early stages of a project I'll often just hack together a Debian native
package for the time being. When releases with purely packaging changes
are infrequent, this can make sense. As stability approaches, though,
eventually the package should gravitate towards the "written especially
for Debian" definition.
--
Colin Watson [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]
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