Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> This is a nontrivial problem, unfortunately.
> So we need a mechanism for a source package to refer to other things
> that it might want. The things that come to my mind as possibly being
> required that ought not to be included within just the one package are
> - .orig.tar.gz files of other packages
> - files which are not .orig.tar.gz of other packages, but which are
> shared in this strange way between other packages
> - built source trees of other packages
Ok, sorry to bring this idea up again -- since it was shot down
viciously last time (about a year ago) as being too radical.
Why don't we distribute all source in .deb files?
That way, we don't need source dependencies - we just use the standard
dependency mechanism all ready in place.
We can also cleanly implement pristine sources just by wrapping them
properly. We wouldn't even have to rename them if they were in
their own subdirs.
The Debian specific changes (ie. the debian directory and any needed
patches) would be stored in a separate .deb than the upstream source.
AFAIK, we are already distributing several source packages using .deb
files --> kernel-source, pcmcia-source, awe-drv
All we need to do is formalize this practice, standardize a naming
scheme (src-<packagename>.deb?) and upssrc-<packagename>.deb?) and a
place to install the source (/usr/src/debian/<packagename>?)
and re-jig our source building routine a bit.
I don't think this would be hard to do at all. It's probably much
simpler than some of the other proposed solutions. And we could
ditch dpkg-source completely and just use dpkg-deb instead.
Cheers,
- Jim
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