Re: original source has file in top-level directory

[Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>]

* Mathias Ertl <mati@fsinf.at>, 2011-11-17, 12:59:
> I am having problems building a source package where the original 
> source package includes a file at the top-level directory. For example, 
> the orig.tar.gz contains:
>
>    mati@haumea:~ $ tar tf some_1.7.1.orig.tar.gz
>    topfile
>    some/file1
>    some/file2
>    ...
>
> This causes problems when I try to build the source package using 
> dpkg-source -b. It claims that all files in the original source where 
> added to the source-file. Example:
>
>    mati@haumea:~ $ dpkg-source -b some-1.7.1
>    dpkg-source: info: using source format `3.0 (quilt)'
>    dpkg-source: info: building some using existing ./some_1.7.1.orig.tar.gz
>    dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file topfile
>    dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of directory some
>    dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file some/file1
>    dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file some/file2
>    ...
>    dpkg-source: info: local changes detected, the modified files are:
>    some-1.7.1/file1
>    some-1.7.1/file2
>    ...
>    dpkg-source: error: aborting due to unexpected upstream changes, see ...
>
> When I remove "topfile" (the one on the top-level), I do not have the 
> problem.

How does the some-1.7.1 directory look like? It should be like this:

some-1.7.1/topfile
some-1.7.1/some/file1
some-1.7.1/some/file2
...

NOT like this:

some-1.7.1/file1
some-1.7.1/file2

> Is it approriate to repackage the orig.tar.gz in this case (if the file 
> is not needed)?

No.

--
Jakub Wilk