Re: Debian policy regarding debian/ upstream directory
Le 26/01/2012 08:36, David MENTRE a écrit :
>> Moreover, I saw that the debian/ repository is also part of the upstream
>> tarball. Keep in mind that it is completely ignored by Debian tools with
>> the 3.0 (quilt) format (only the one from .debian.tar.gz is taken into
>> account), which is a good thing. The rationale is that the upstream
>> Debian packaging is (conceptually) not the same as the one officially in
>> Debian (or in another dpkg-based distribution), each might evolve
>> differently and comparing both might not even make sense.
>
> Is this because, for example, both Ubuntu and Debian are using this
> debian/ repository? [...]
Not exactly. What I meant is that in Debian, stuff might be changed in
debian/ independently of upstream. For example, to follow changes in
policy, package renaming, transitions, etc. The upstream "Debian
packaging" then becomes osbolete, and it seems wrong to me to make a new
upstream release just to keep up with Debian-specific changes. I am not
against upstream distributing their own (unofficial) Debian packaging...
I just advocate a separation of the upstream part and the Debian part,
even if the packaging is done upstream.
> [...] As a programmer, it seems to me counter-productive
> to keep package relative information in several places instead of
> putting them in only on place, in the upstream tarball. In upstream,
> several packagers (Fedora, Debian, ...) can copy best practices *for
> this package*, instead of reinventing the wheel (I'm thinking at init
> script for example).
You can put shareable resources such as init scripts outside debian/,
but I would say most (if not all) of what is in debian/ is (or should
be) Debian-specific and cannot really be shared with another
distribution that doesn't use the Debian toolchain (such as Fedora).
Cheers,
--
Stéphane
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