Re: RFC: xindy

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Jörg Sommer <joerg@alea.gnuu.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to see my package xindy (#362584) is uploaded to unstable.

I probably won't have time to sponsor an upload (I recommend to ask some
clisp people), but here are some comments.

- According to the README file, xindy is distributed as

,----
|  -- the xindy scripts and modules in source form
|  -- the xindy kernel in binary form
|  -- the xindy run time environment in binary form
`----
  
  and the sources for kernel and runtime environment are available
  separately.  In your copyright file, you just give the xindy homepage
  as "downloaded from", but do not indicate whether you have repackaged
  the tar.gz to contain all sources.  Even if the clisp rte is not
  actually used:  If we distribute it in main, we need to have the
  sources. 

  Ah, in debian/rules there's a get-orig-source target.  This looks as
  if the sources for the kernel and rte are missing?  Or is just the
  description in README misleading?

- The description of the xindy binary package ends with

,----
|  Have a
|  look at xindy's Overview that describes its most important features!
|  .
|   Homepage: http://xindy.sourceforge.net/
`----

  To me it is unclear what "xindy's Overview" should be.  One could
  guess that it's something on the homepage, but there's no "Overview"
  navigation item.

- why not use compatibility level 5 for a new package?

- AM_MAINTAINER_MODE: You write in debian/rules

,----
| # upstream did not disable the maintainer mode of its makefile. If you have
| # a newer version of autotools installed all makefiles are rebuild and my
| # dpatches are lost. This variables pevent the rebuild of makefiles.
| export ACLOCAL=/bin/true
| export AMTAR=/bin/true
| export AUTOCONF=/bin/true
| export AUTOHEADER=/bin/true
| export AUTOMAKE=/bin/true
| export MAKEINFO=/bin/true
`----

  Wouldn't it be much easier to just patch the build system and disable
  maintainer mode?

- fix-echo-expansion.dpatch:

,----
| ## DP: The echo command shipped with the Debian system takes \ as an escape
| ## DP: sequence. This causes a formfeed is printed in the string "\fenc...". 
| ...
| -       echo "\fenc{T2A}" >>$@
| +       printf "%s\n" "\fenc{T2A}" >>$@
|         echo "\chapter{Cyrillic scripts}" >>$@
`----

    I'd rather do the same for all echos with backslashes.  The behavior
    with respect to control sequences seems to be "implementation
    dependent" according to the POSIX specification, and while
    coreutil's and bash's echo don't treat any of them as a control
    sequence (unless called with -e), dash's echo also honors the \c in
    \chapter and doesn't output anything...

Otherwise, the patches look good - have you reported them to Joachim?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)