Matt Zimmerman wrote:
I tend to disagree since it is not instantly clear if these are used to build the target.in a program I am packaging, a copy of the source of libtiff, libpng and libjpeg is included (and was originally linked statically). In the Debian package, I use the respective Debian libraries, linking dynamically, and these directories are unused. Should I delete these from the original source? It's clear that this won't reduce download size, because they would still be in orig.tar.gz. It would just avoid confusion among people who want to compile a custom version based on my debianized source. What do you (or policy? Didn't find anything) recommend?I don't think it is worthwhile to try to delete them; the mere presence of these directories should not confuse anyone.
ldd clarifies the situation once the application is built, though.
I am not a Debian developer (IANADD?), but I would prefer to have README.DebianHow were you thinking of deleting them? You say "delete...from the original source", but then say that .orig.tar.gz would be intact (which is good).
explain the situation and to reduce the original source by the persistentlyunused directories. I do not think this is against the debian policy since these files are not really part of the package that is being packed, it is only a technical
commodity to distribute these independent files together with it.The policy suggests in 5.2 to write a debian/rule target 'get-orig-source'. This could well be used to guarantee reproducability. The tar command has a --delete option that you may consider to use, however, this may be unpractical for your situation.
Steffen -- Steffen Möller <moeller@pzr.uni-rostock.de>