Re: overhaul of the debian ocaml policy

[Sylvain Le Gall <gildor@debian.org>]

On 22-08-2010, Ralf Treinen <treinen@free.fr> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 11:12:58PM +0000, Sylvain Le Gall wrote:
> [...]
>> I propose something like:
>> 
>> origin = "debian-packagers"
>> 
>> or 
>> 
>> createdby = "debian-packagers"
>> 
>> BTW, it is a variable so there is no point of having 
>> origin = X
>> origin = Y
>> 
>> (the second override the first). Do I miss something or should this
>> value only hold one team/packager ?
>
> What is the reason to mandate a special field or comment in the META
> field when it is created by debian? We are patching sources all the time
> both for end user applications and develpment packages, without attaching
> an extra warning sign. What makes META files so special that warrants
> an exception to that rule?
>

Whenever you patch the source, IMHO, you limit the patch to:
- fix the build system to make it compile on Debian (source -> binary
  package, new OCaml version)
- fix security bugs

Usually, you don't add features -- except when you add a META file. In
this case you add a feature that the upstream doesn't (yet) support:
compatibility with findlib. 

This is to my mind enough to add some kind of signs in the code saying
that this feature has been added by Debian and will hopefully be added
upstream. 

BTW, since there are several distro, this META file can diverge just
like the camlzip META file, when upstream doesn't ship its own META
file.

Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall