Re: debian .orig.tar.gz vs. upstream tar.gz

[Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@imsc.res.in>]

Hello,

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007, Jörg Sommer wrote:
> > Do *not* get the upstream .tar.gz which may have changed for some
> > mysterious reason.
> 
> I don't think the upstream tar.gz have changed, but your orig.tar.gz is
> not the same as the upstream tar.gz. This happens if the orig.tar.gz was
> repacked to rename the top directory to <package>-<version>.
> dpkg-buildpackage -S does this as described by Policy C.4.

Section C.4 describes how to unpack the source without dpkg-source
not how it is repacked by dpkg-buildpackage --- at least in my local
copy of "debian-policy". 

If the upstream source package is already in the form of a .tar.gz
there is little reason to repack the source. In particular, the
manner in which dpkg-source unpacks the source ensures that "rename
the top directory to <package>-<version>" is generally not a good
enough reason to repack the source.

For large enough packages, repacking with "gzip -9 --rsyncable" may
be a good enough reason. (Though policy C.3 asserts that the
Debian .tar.gz should *always* be "gzip -9" compressed so I am
probably wrong about the "large enough" part).

In any case if this is done then it *must* be documented in
debian/changelog and/or README.Debian-source.

Regards,

Kapil.
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