Re: overhaul of the debian ocaml policy

[Florent Monnier <monnier.florent@gmail.com>]

Le samedi 21 août 2010 20:36:59, Sylvain Le Gall a écrit :
> On 21-08-2010, Florent Monnier <monnier.florent@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Le samedi 21 août 2010 18:46:59, Sylvain Le Gall a écrit :
> >> On 21-08-2010, Florent Monnier <monnier.florent@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Le samedi 21 août 2010 12:53:22, Sylvain Le Gall a écrit :
> >> >> On 15-08-2010, Sylvain Le Gall <gildor@debian.org> wrote:
> >> >> > On 15-08-2010, Ralf Treinen <treinen@free.fr> wrote:
> >> >> >> My modifications in the policy mostly concern the chapter
> >> >> >> generalities where I have refactored some stuff, to some extend
> >> >> >> the chapter on prog packaging, and to an even lesser extend the
> >> >> >> chapter on libary packaging. Please have a look and comment on
> >> >> >> the list, or modify directly in git for small modifications.
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > I would like to discuss the section about META files in
> >> >> > chapter-libpack.xml
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > We had a discussion with Mehdi about the right location of the
> >> >> > META, we (pkg-ocaml-maint) write in place of the upstream.
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > I tend to think that putting them into METAS/ is a good way to show
> >> >> > that this META is not one from upstream (i.e. distro specific).
> >> >> 
> >> >> OK, as I am the only one to support this POV, it seems this is not a
> >> >> good thing.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Ralf, can you add a note about the "META" explaining that if we
> >> >> create a META on Debian side, we should store it into the library
> >> >> directory?
> >> > 
> >> > IMO the idea of putting a comment to the added METAs is good
> >> > so then someone who care about writing a Makefile that will work
> >> > on a pristine install can do it
> >> > 
> >> > Also maybe we could use the same comment in several distro
> >> > so that users can use the same grep command without needing to care
> >> > which distro they use.
> >> 
> >> We could even define a variable for this e.g. add:
> >> 
> >> origin = "Debian"
> >> 
> >> in the META file. This is better than a comment: you can grep it and you
> >> can programmatically access it through findlib. It is also a construct
> >> allowed by META syntax (i.e. you can define useless variables).
> > 
> > Yes, but if the upstream puts:
> > origin = "Debian"
> > and if mdv puts
> > origin = "Mandriva"
> > it becomes harder to filter from only one grep command (and in a generic
> > way over different distros) which comes from packagers.
> > Do you understand?
> 
> No!
> 
> Please give me examples of what you expect and how origin = "Debian"
> differs from a comment. The main point for me is to let end user (i.e
> ocam dev. that uses debian) know that some META has been written by
> ocaml team and hence can differ in other distro. A META provided by
> upstream doesn't need anything, in this case.

Please forgive me for my poor explanation,
I have no preference for a comment over a tag, I don't really care,
the only thing I mean is that it would be nice if we had one keyword in this 
string that a user can expect to find whatever distro he's using.

For example if we use:
origin="packaging::Debian"
origin="packaging::Mandriva"

then one can get the list of the added META with this single command:
$ grep -l packaging `ocamlc -where`/*/META

But if we use:
origin="Debian"
origin="Mandriva"
then the user has to know which distro he's using first, before to grep it as a 
keyword.
and in this example you can't use "origin" as a keyword too, because you can't 
prevent an upstream to use an "origin" field too, for example:
origin="janest"
OK one can grep "origin" to display its content, but not *filter* the META files 
that come from packagers.

I hope what I mean is clearer now, is it?

-- 
Regards
Florent