Re: Getting close to releasing my first .deb's... What's next?
Tyler MacDonald <tyler@yi.org> writes:
> 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?
Yup. :)
>> 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. ;-)
*grin*. Fair enough.
> 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. :-)
It's one of the ways in which Debian is different than a lot of other
distributions. People tend to just toss their Red Hat spec files into the
same package distribution. But I think a lot of that is because people
get RPMs from all over the place and have a whole hodgepodge of different
things on their system, whereas with Debian the emphasis is on having one
central trusted location for (nearly) all Debian packages of interest.
Separating the Debian packaging and the upstream source makes it a bit
clearer that the Debian packaging is allowed to have an independent
existence from upstream and that Debian as a project is taking on some
willingness to keep the package up to date or at least retire it in an
orderly fashion if it can't be maintained any more. If, for instance, you
should for some reason lose interest in the project but someone else still
wanted to maintain the Debian packages, they would move forward and
continue to make modifications in the debian/ directory.
It's a bit hard to explain, as it really is a sort of "feel" thing, but I
started with exactly the same feelings as you have and came around to
doing the split for my own packages. One of the things I like about
Debian is the emphasis on consistency across Debian and integration into
the Debian packaging tools, emphasized over and above consistency with any
single upstream. When I'm upstream myself, it feels weird, but since I
like how the principal works in all other cases, it feels right to play
ball with my own software as well. As the maintainer of, say, kstart, I'm
really wearing two hats: I'm the upstream maintainer and I'm the Debian
packager. The separate debian/ directory is sort of a psychological
separation of hats that keeps it clearer that I may not always and forever
wear both hats.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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