Re: RFS: instead

[Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>]

Hi Jakub,

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:17:12AM +0200, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> * Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>, 2011-10-12, 09:12:
> >Your debian/rules file basically needs to be rewritten.
> 
> Sorry, but that's not helpful. Care to elaborate what's so
> inherently wrong with the current debian/rules?

I highlighted some aspects below, but there are more and I should have
mentioned them.

> >It would also help to compress the file by using e.g. dh.
> 
> Help with what? (I took me a while to understand what you meant
> here. dh doesn't compress anything, except through dh_compress. ;>)

Sorry for being unclear. It would help with readability. Using dh kind
of compresses the file, because it removes the need to list every single
dh_* command on its own line. Thus a rules file using dh is usually much
shorter.

> >Why do you depend on debhelper 8 again
> 
> Because he uses compat 8.

Is this the only debhelper 8 "feature" he uses?

> >when you don't even use dh?
> 
> I don't see how is that relevant.

This is not a direct problem in the package, but it highlights that the
maintainer did not fully understand what debhelper version 8 provides.

So what else is going on in the rules file?

 * "# Add here commands to configure the package." (multiple times)
 * "#       dh_installcron" (multiple times)
 * configure is run from build-stamp target, so the configure-stamp
   target becomes useless.
 * "rm -rf Rules.make" in the build-stamp target. Why?

All of which does not influence the resulting package, but it makes
reading the source package needlessly hard.

Helmut