Re: How to include information about a source package ?
Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> Oh no, I bet there's another point of DevRef contention for you ..
> | 3. _should_, except where impossible for legal reasons, preserve the
> | entire building and portablility infrastructure provided by the
> | upstream author. For example, it is not a sufficient reason for
> | omitting a file that it is used only when building on MS-DOS.
> | Similarly, a Makefile provided by upstream should not be omitted
> | even if the first thing your `debian/rules' does is to overwrite
> | it by running a configure script.
> |
> | (_Rationale:_ It is common for Debian users who need to build
> | software for non-Debian platforms to fetch the source from a
> | Debian mirror rather than trying to locate a canonical upstream
> | distribution point).
> This is another thing I was going to do with a new saods9 revision
> (previously, I was stipping libraries which Debian already includes)..
Yeah, I know. The thing is, no one in their right mind is going to grab
the Debian source and use it to build the Windows client, for a whole host
of reasons ranging from the existence of official Windows packages, the
easy availability of the upstream Windows source, and the fact that the
Windows client is almost completely separate from the Unix client and
therefore won't benefit from the Debian patches (and may even suffer from
them since I definitely don't test any of my modifications on Windows).
If it were smaller, I'd shrug and include it anyway, like I do with the
500KB or so of random Java stuff that probably doesn't even build. But
it's 8MB, which seems awfully wasteful to include just for the sake of
completeness.
In this case, I don't disagree with the DevRef. I think this package is
just part of why that's should and not must, the distinction being that
shoulds are rules that one may occasionally have reason to not follow.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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