Re: RFS: openteacher
[Arvind, I hope you don't mind if I publish quotes from your private
mail to the public list. I do not really consider the information very
private and it is important to share the information. Otherwise you will
not get further helpful input of other mentors.]
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 09:00:50AM +0530, Arvind S Raj wrote:
> Also do forgive me if I'm asking really stupid questions-it's my first ever
> time at packaging and maintaining. Never done it before.
Sure. No problem at all.
> > - #Vcs-*
> > -> any reason why not just injecting the package to Vcs? I'm in
> > big favour of using team maintenance and thus I would really like
> > you to use the Vcs and set the Tags accordingly
> >
>
> I thought it is sufficient to add the launchpad link since it takes you to
> their official page that also has the links to the source.
The Vcs fields in Debian are used by some applications and thus should be
properly set. Launchpad is not used inside applications at any debian.org
service.
> 1. I actually downloaded the source from sourceforge. They do their version
> control at launchpad. Do I have to add those links?
Hmmmm, I admit I have no idea in how far sourceforge projects can do
version control at launchpad. The sense of the Vcs tags in the Debian
package is to give links where *the* *Debian* *packaging* *stuff* (so
the content of your debian/ directory) is maintained. In collab-qa you
do not keep just another copy of upstream code but you maintain the code
which is for Debian exclusively and you should NOT maintain the debian/
directory in the upstream source tree (for several reasons discussed
several times before).
When using Git it is a matter of policy if you keep a clone of the
upstream code or not in collab-qa. In Svn usually only the debian/
directory is kept.
> 2. They use bzr for version control and so when I add the line "Vcs-Bzr: bzr
> branch lp:openteacher", it highlights "bzr branch lp:openteacher" in red. Is
> there anything wrong in the way I specified the bzr branch?
I further admit that I have no idea about bzr. If you want me to
sponsor openteacher I would like to ask you to stick to SVN or Git for
maintaining the debian/ dir. For the upstream code I do not need to
access the Vcs directly because only the tarball is used I do not care
at all about the Vcs.
>
> > - long description: <nitpicking mode on>Please do not add newlines
> > inbetween each single item, using two spaces in the beginning of a
> > line is sufficient to get the wanted pacing. It might disturb the
> > rendering in some applications<nitpicking mode off>
>
> Done; do take a look if the present changes are sufficient once I've
> uploaded. I've also changed the description a bit.
If you would decide for a Vcs location at Alioth I could have a look...
> > debian/rules
> > <nitpicking mode on>PLease replace the comment from the template
> > in the beginning by something that makes sense<nitpicking mode off>
> >
>
> It shall be done. I'm working on what I could add as the comment. What
> information needs to be included for sure in the comment? Is there any
> particular format?
Nothing special. My debian/rules files usually start with
#!/usr/bin/make -f
# debian/rules file for <packagename>
# (C) Andreas Tille
# GPL
If you like you can be more verbose. I just don't like it very much if
people simply leave the template which does not really fit the actual
file. Please note: If I'm writing in <nitpicking mode> this is no real
reason to stop me from uploading - just a hint for beginners who might
not have thought about certain stuff.
> What do I add in the watch file? I assumed that upstream sources are always
> in the archive format so what can I watch?
Try
man uscan
In Debian there exist tools to scan upstream websites for new releases
to inform the maintainer that he needs to package this new version.
> > debian/opentecher.1: Manpage needs to be installed
> What did you mean by needs to be installed? I didn't get you.
$ lintian openteacher_2.0beta2-1_amd64.deb
W: openteacher: binary-without-manpage usr/bin/openteacher
To fix this you want to add a file
debian/manpages
with the content
debian/openteacher.1
(see man dh_installman) to make sure that the manpage you provided is
actually moved to the package.
Hope this helps
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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