Re: Debian changelog vs upstream changelog

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:09:47PM +0800, Paul Wise a écrit :
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> wrote:
> 
> > Again, all of this is very preliminary and undocumented. The main message I
> > would like to give is that indeed, for all the information that is not specific
> > to Debian, there must be other ways to make them flow from the maintainer to
> > the user without transiting through the debian/control file.
> 
> This paragraph triggered my memory of PackageMap, a way to map package
> names between distributions:
> 
> http://blog.hartwork.org/?p=373
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/packagemap
> 
> It might actually be best to store all this upstream data in the
> PackageMap or somewhere associated with it and map from Debian package
> -> PackageMap name -> upstream metadata.

Dear Paul,

thank you for the links. PackageMap looks like a potentially useful project,
but I note that the mailing list archive contains only one message, dated
September 2009, that leads to a Git repository which last commit is also three
month old. Of course, starting to use PackageMap could help to revive this
project, but it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Moreover, I have a
bigger problem with PackageMap: it is an XML format, and I am much affraid that
it will strongly limit its adoption.

This said, after getting a good proof of principle in Debian, I can definitely
send a summary in the freedestkop.org mailing list, in order to see if there
are possiblities to converge. If the PackageMap developers have interest in
writing helper tools that let people contribute informations without learning
an XML format, that would lower the entry bar. But one big problem remains:
unless PackageMap is world-writable, Debian developers would have to request
commit rights to contribute, which again does not facilitate adoption.

Of course, if there is ever a large-scale accumulation of upstream metadata in
Debian, it should be forwarded at an upper level, probably upstream like we do
for the manpages, the FreeDesktop.org menu entries, the patches, …

Have a nice day, 

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan