Re: Updating a package; ediquette and procedure questions
"Paul Johnson" <pauljohn32@gmail.com> writes:
> The Debian packaging process still seems awkward to me, but I think
> I'm starting to make it work.
Congratulations on your persistence, and thank you for your efforts to
understand the needs of those who package your software.
> I had not realized the package builder was detecting the version of
> the deb package from the changelog. Surprise!
A pleasant surprise, I hope. (I see it as an excellent application of
the Don't Repeat Yourself principle.)
> 1. Is this roughly how you would go about building a package for a
> new source tarball?
I'd usually maintain an ongoing "upstream source" branch in the VCS,
and merge the changes from a new version into that. Not try to build
directly from the upstream source.
Then, use the appropriate 'foovcs-buildpackage' tool (where 'foovcs'
is the VCS in question) to automatically export and copy files to the
appropraite places to generate Debian source and binary packages.
> 2. In Ubuntu, or Debian more generally, what happens when package
> maintainers don't stay up to date?
Someone files a bug report against the package. Setting the bug report
severity to "wishlist" and summary of "New upstream version available"
are customary, but not immutable.
That bug report is then the contact point for any discussion about
packaging that new upstream version, regardless of whether the
official package maintainer is responsive.
> It is a little tough to figure out who is responsible for a package
> sometimes, there is an OriginalMaintainer and other names in the
> changelog.
The Debian source package format includes a mandatory control file
with fields describing the package; look for "foo_1.2-3.dsc". One of
the mandatory fields in that file is 'Maintainer', giving the contact
details for the maintainer of the Debian package.
> If you email the person you think is in charge, and don't get an
> answer, what do you do?
Be patient, if possible. File the "New upstream version available" bug
report yourself, definitely.
If it's more urgent that a new version should be packaged (e.g. a
security vulnerability), you could agitate for some other Debian
developer to address the bug report, with a Non-Maintainer Upload of a
new revision of the package.
> 3. What do you do with code distributed in bz2 files?
Complain about the fact that the currently-supported Debian source
package format doesn't allow them. Then, repackage them as gzip
tarballs.
There is a new source package format specification in the pipeline
that does allow (among many new features) upstream source tarballs in
bzip2 format, but cannot be recommended until the entire toolchain and
infrastructure supports that specification.
--
\ “Holy astringent plum-like fruit, Batman!” —Robin |
`\ |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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