Re: What to do if the upstream keeps debian directory in original tarball?

[Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 09:53:19PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Martin Meredith <mez@ubuntu.com> writes:
> 
> > Why not just work with upstream as you seem to be doing - and when the
> > packagings done - download it ... and upload as a debian native package?
> 
> > Surely if upstream keep a debian/ directory in the tarball then it would
> > automatically be assumed as a debian native package?
A Debian native package is one which is built without an orig.tar.gz
of the expected name in the parent directory of the package directory.
Usually it happens accidentally, because someone used the wrong name,
hyphens vs. underscores or something.

It is evidenced by the upload of only a .tar.gz and a .dsc, and not a
.diff.gz

> A Debian native package means that every time you change *anything* about
> the package, you have to increment the regular version number for the
> package.  That means you cannot do *anything* with the package without
> getting upstream to release a new version.  This is generally a bad idea
> even if you're upstream; it's really not a good idea if you're not
> upstream for the package.
Yea, and it is worse because people often accidentally upload packages
as native which should not be.

wget -O- ftp://ftp.CC.debian.org/debian/ls-lR.gz |gunzip |grep ' [^-]*\.deb$' |awk '{print $9}' |sed -e 's/_.*//' |sort -u |wc -l
407

That's how many native packages we have somewhere in the archive.
Humm.  I wonder how many were created specifically for use in Debian
and have never been used elsewhere?

-- 
Clear skies,
Justin