Re: RFS: vbackup
On Wednesday 30 July 2008, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Stefanos Harhalakis <v13@v13.gr> [2008.07.30.1345 +0200]:
> > Include a comparison of vbackup with other software in the package
> > description? Somehow I don't find this right. I believe that it is
> > a moving target that may imply false things regarding other
> > packages at some point in the future if not updated correctly.
>
> Then you ought to update it regularly. This is for users. If you are
> a user and want to decide between backupninja and vbackup, then it's
> really helpful to have a short statement how they compare.
> Once vbackup is a real "competitor" to backupninja, backupninja
> should also mention vbackup.
I still don't agree with that. Using debian for some time now, I don't believe
that most descriptions follow this. Konqueror doesn't compare itself to
Firefox, vim to emacs, alpine to mutt, lighttpd to apache, sbackup, kdat,
bacula and backupninja to each other, etc...
Also, I find it very inefficient to have to update a debian package whenever
another package (that the first one doesn't depend on or suggests or
recommends) adds features. That inefficiency affects not only the maintainer
but also the sponsor, the debian-related servers and all debian users.
After all, I'm not developing vbackup as a replacement for another backup
solution. I'm doing it because I couldn't find another opensource program
that fits my needs and may be extended in every way (most probably I
overlooked backupninja). I just happen to have experience from server backups
as a sysadmin and from home backups as an individual user for about 10 years
(even though I don't consider myself an expert or even an advanced user on
backups) and decided to code a custom solution for my needs and make it
available as an opensource project. I very much prefer to mention what
vbackup does and leave any comparison to others.
> > Nothing related to backup. At first it was named sbackup (simple
> > backup) but since that name was already used I changed it to
> > vbackup (a letter from my nick). Does this play any role in debian
> > packaging?
>
> No, just curious. You could put in the README of package description
> that the v is arbitrary. Otherwise people might think this is
> a "virtual backup" programme.
Most of the time i prefer to focus on the actual thing and not consider titles
at all, but since we're talking about this, what "virtual backup" may
actually stand for? Isn't the description the actual point of reference for
what a program does? One could have used a name like "jupiter" that wouldn't
describe the program at all.
But it seems that you're right on a broader scale and the short description
needs to be extended a bit to better describe what vbackup does. I'll attempt
to fix this.
> > I'm using lintian v1.24.2 and there is no such warning:
>
> Hm, maybe I used an outdated one by accident? Thanks for checking
> back.
Actually AFAICS you're right and there should be a warning.
debian/vbackup.doc-base had the line:
Section: admin
and admin is not a valid section name for doc-base as they are listed at [1].
Either 'admin' works as an alias for 'Administration' or this is actually a
problem (?)... Anyway, being -pedantic, I changed that to "Section:
Administration"
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/ch2.html
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