Re: Getting close to releasing my first .deb's... What's next?

[Tyler MacDonald <tyler@yi.org>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
> The general rule of thumb is that if there is any intention whatsoever
> that the package be used on a platform other than Debian, the Debian
> packaging and the upstream source should be separate.

	Okay, so what do you guys do about upstream sources that already
have a debian/ directory? Just gripe and deal with it?

> The Debian packaging and the upstream source are often going to change
> independently; there will be fixes for Debian (such as changes to the
> dependencies) that won't result in any changes to the upstream source and
> for which there's no reason to do a new upstream release. 

	I would probably do a new upstream release anyways, with a changelog
entry like "Depend on new and improved package <x> under debian", and maybe
find an excuse to throw in a few other patches as well. If anything, it
means the word "debian" will appear on the freshmeat front page for a few
seconds. ;-)

> Also, including the debian directory in the upstream release makes it
> somewhat harder to package, since the packager has to worry about files
> that may not be accurate for packaging changes and that have to be removed
> so that debhelper doesn't do the wrong thing, which is hard to do with a
> diff.

	Fair enough...

> I'm in the same boat as you and am unlikely to ever use something other
> than Debian, but I made this separation for all of my packages.  I
> actually keep everything together in Subversion, including the debian
> directory, but exclude the debian directory from the distribution and
> build Debian packages by exporting the Debian directory from Subversion
> over a virgin source untar.
> 
>     <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/notes/debian/build-tools.html>
> 
> has some additional details for how I do this personally.

	There is a *wealth* of good information there. Thanks!!

	So I guess I will roll mod_bt 0.0.15 *without* the debian/
directory, even though debianizability was the primary focus of that
release. (Don't worry, there's still a few other things going into it as
well.) But, on the record, it really irks me that it has to be that way. :-)

	Cheers,
		Tyler