Academical question: How to package foo and foo-patched?
Hi,
I have one academical question: Suppose that there is a package foo in
Debian which has become almost completely unmaintained upstream. The
Debian maintainer is also not responding well to queries and bug
reports regarding foo.
Suppose further, that since foo has become unmaintained upstream,
there has been an upstream split from foo to foo-patched which is
progressing fine. I can build Debian packages for foo-patched using
the Debian patch for foo with minimal changes and would now like to
upload Debian packages for foo-patched to the archive.
My first idea would be taking foo's Debian patch and maintain a patch
against foo's Debian patch which makes a Debian patch for foo-patched
which creates a good Debian package for foo-patched. But this sounds
like dirty hack, and will probably end up in the Debian packages for
foo and foo-patched to differ in more and more ways, making them
incompatible sooner or later. I'd like to avoid that.
How would more experienced Debian maintainers handle this issue?
This question is marked academic since I have just been fired from the
company that uses foo, and I would probably not have any more use for
Debian foo-patched packages myself in the future. Since I would need
some kind of complicated test bed to test foo-patched packages for
functionality in the near future, I don't see that my foo-patched
packages will be in the archive soon.
The package in question has been anonymized because of the academic
nature of my question and to not offend upstream and the current
Debian maintainer.
Please comment.
Greetings
Marc
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Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
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Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31 29
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