Re: Forwarded: RFC: New source packaging format

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

From: Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>
> Funny that there has been so much negative reaction -- and nobody has
> even bothered to download the samples I put up yet.

I'm sorry, but your technical description was more than sufficient :-)
Since you insisted that I download your package, I have done so. I ran
it, built a binary package, and examined how it worked. I see I was wrong
about one thing: it would not double the package name-space, it would triple
it. I found more problems, but I don't see that it would be productive for
me to enumerate them here. I remain unconvinced that your approach be a good
one for us to follow. That is my response to your request for comments.

You suggested that I do not understand the development process.
Of course my record speaks for itself, as does your Debian system.

I understand that you might be bothered by the problems of making binary
data go through dpkg-source, and its history of building files that it
then had difficulty extracting. I would much prefer to fix these problems
than to abandon the dpkg-source format, which is itself quite clean.

I accept your point that downloading diffs is more economical than
downloading a monolithic source package. However, we have had many
requests for a single-file source package, and such a thing could easily
be extracted into diffs and source just as we have today.

	Thanks

	Bruce
-- 
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