Thus spoke Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> on 2001-10-12 14:09:17: > FWIW, I agree with much of what you've said, except the title of your > rant (nothing that you are ranting about is specific to any particular > tool used in debian/rules), and this item: > When I wrote the subject, I was thinking of dh_make, which is, in my interpretation, a helper tool. Most of the things I described are a kind of abuse of dh_make, hence the subject. > > Those who dare to touch upstream sources without need, tend to fall > > deeper into that pit. As an example, when there's no install target in > > the original Makefile, they patch it. Even if it would be an `install > > -m 0755 foo debian/foo/usr/bin/bar' line in debian/rules' install > > target. No, they go and patch the Makefile instead, introducing a > > great deal of junk into the diff. > > A "great deal of junk" that they can (and for all you know, already > have) trivially send upstream to make the package as a whole better. > There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I might have been a bit upset, sorry. Maybe that paragraph shouldn't made it into the mail. I was imagining, that if the Makefile's install target is somewhat buggy, but can be worked around in debian/rules with a few lines, then one could do the workaround, and in the meanwhile, send a fixed Makefile to upstream, thus keeping the patch cleaner (by touching less files), and making sure the next upstream will include a fixed Makefile.
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