Re: Bug#750576: ITP: debdry -- Semi-assisted automatic Debian packaging
Hi Enrico,
I'm not at Debconf, but heard of your debdry session and that way of
this ITP. (Actually Elmar, Cc'ed, made me aware of it.)
Enrico Zini wrote:
> The idea of debdry is to regenerate the debian/ directory every time a
> new version of the software is packaged, using the dh-make-equivalent
> for the given package type.
There are already packages in Debian which offer such functionality
for a specific subset of packages and which I think may help debdry to
reach its goal by not reinventing the part that's already there. :-)
I know at least of such functionality for Perl based packages (Cc'ing
the debian-perl list for that, too) in two flavours:
* dh-make-perl(*) has a subcommand refresh which refreshes the debian
directory. For me, this works quite well with packages maintained in
git. After a new upstream release, I run "dh-make-perl refresh" and
then "git checkout -p" to review the changes it has done and then
weed out the changes I don't need or want.
One thing which is always added and then again removed by me, is the
dh-make-perl disclaimer in debian/control. Despite this is a
repetitive thing, I still think, it's not a bad thing, but debdry
may want to remove that automatically again.
* dh-dist-zilla[1] exists since end of July and it's main purpose
is to use Dist::Zilla[2]'s DRY features directly from your
debian/rules so you don't need to commit the Dist::Zilla generated
files to git (e.g. in a second just-for-debian upstream branch) if
you're upstream and package maintainer in one person. With "dh $@
--with dist-zilla", all debhelper needs is a dist.ini (and proper
build-dependencies being installed) to build your .deb.
[1] https://github.com/elmar/dh-dist-zilla
[2] http://dzil.org/
Since version 1.1, dh-dist-zilla also sports a dh-dzil-refresh
command which combines the features of Dist::Zilla and "dh-make-perl
refresh" to achieve the same as above, but with just having a
dist.ini and no Makefile.PL or Build.PL yet.
My long-term plan is to add dh-dist-zilla support to dh-make-perl,
i.e. that dh-make-perl can cope with perl modules where upstream
only provides a dist.ini but no Makefile.PL or Build.PL by making
use of dh-dist-zilla.
> It then takes manually maintained data from
> the debian.in/ directory and uses it to complete the packaging.
For native or near-native (upstream = debian maintainer) packages
there also exists the idea of doing the opposite: Generating what is
needed for upstream setup tools based data in e.g. debian/control. In
the Perl world that would mean to generate dist.ini (preferably),
Makefile.PL or Build.PL based on data in debian/control.
> I have no intention of having debdry replace hand-writing debian/
> directories, nor have it handle all possible corner cases. I aim at it
> being useful in the general case. I want to address the ordinary,
> routine, boring work, and leave the rest as it is.
Sounds as if maintaining packages in git and "git checkout -p" again
would be a helpful add-on to the expected workflow. :-)
Looking forward to see this bird fly! :-)
Enrico wrote on debian-devel@l.d.o:
> Also, debdry is the first package that I have written that takes care
> of its own packaging :)
I don't see a debian.in directory in
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/debdry.git/tree/
So not sure where stuff came from when I ran "./debdry" in the git
checkout, but it did work to some extent. I was though surprised to
see a new "Standards-Version: 3.9.1" in the modified debian/control.
:-)
(*) After writing that, I saw that you already mention dh-make-perl in
your README.md.
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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