Re: RFS: new powertop version
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:15:01AM -0300, David Bremner wrote:
> Julian Wollrath <jwollrath@web.de> writes:
>
> > I prepared a new version, which keeps the changes in the rules minimal but
> > since upstream changed the building process a little bit, minimal changes were
> > needed to get it build. The massive changes of the copyright file were also
> > needed so that it would be machine readable according to the specifications in
> > http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/.
>
> This kind of change (changing the copyright file format) is not usually
> acceptable in an NMU, unless cleared with the maintainer.
I just want to add that I very much agree with that changing the copyright file
format does not belong in an NMU.
> Although many
> maintainers consider the use of the machine readable format to be a best
> practice,
I'm not one of those maintainers. I prefer the old plain text format.
> it does not have the force of policy,
I'm happy with that.
> and the absence of
> machine readable formatting of debian/copyright is at most wishlist bug,
> i.e. something that the submitter might like, but the maintainer might
> or might not agree is an improvement.
I have so far not seen any benefit from the "machine readable formatting".
Actually, I think that developing tools to extract all copyright and license
information from the upstream software would be a better investment of time
than the time spent by those many packagers hand-coding that "machine readable
format".
>
> Note that while it is not especially likely, it is possible to introduce
> release critical bugs (violations of policy "must"s) by editing of
> debian/copyright.
I agree. It is better to simply quote the exact texts from the upstream
software.
> For more information, see section 12.5 of Debian
> policy.
>
> Pretty much the same thing holds for changing packaging formats from 1.0
> to 3.0 (quilt), which you did not do here, but is a common beginner
> mistake in NMUs.
I also agree that changing this aspect does not belong in an NMU.
>
> Thanks for your efforts, and don't get too discouraged, more experienced
> contributors make similar mistakes.
That is unfortunately very true. I also learn while sponsoring packages from
beginning package maintainers.
Regards,
Bart Martens
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