Re: Reforming 'orig.tar.gz' with included tar-ball.
Chow Loong Jin wrote:
> On Tuesday 26,January,2010 06:44 PM, Mats Erik Andersson wrote:
>> Hello all mentors,
>>
>> I am in the process of fulfilling an ITA filed on an orphaned package.
>> However, I now experience a desire to begin patching the upstream
>> source for compiling errors and spelling errors in the manual page.
>>
>> To my dismay the previous maintainer chose to let the 'orig.tar.gz'-file
>> contain the packaged and compressed upstream tar archive. My personal
>> taste is to abondon this practice, if for no other reason to simplify
>> the rules-file.
>>
>> Is there some reverence that should prevent me from taking the step
>> of letting a new 'orig.tar.gz' be a byte-for-byte copy of the upstream
>> source archive? I will make the new package conform to "3.0 (quilt)".
>>
> AFAIK the orig.tar.gz should be a byte-for-byte copy of the upstream source
> archive wherever possible, and packaging the upstream source archive within a
> separate, self-created orig.tar.gz is a practice to be avoided unless there is a
> very strong reason for it. I believe this holds true for both the 1.0 and 3.0
> source formats.
I'd like to temper the above.
I think that creating changes in the upstream code is fine if the idea
is to have the orig.tar.gz comply better to the policy (not sure if it's
the case here), or if the upstream has non-free code that you want to
get rid of, but my personal advice is to provide the script to do it in
the debian/ folder and document it in README.Source, so that an eventual
new maintainer can easily take over.
Thomas
Reply to: