Re: Apology to the authors of helper packages
Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> This is old hat, and I think it should not be raked up again,
[usual stuff from Manoj - Christoph deleted]
> Alos, I was not asking for expertise, but mere competence. I
> know better than to ask for expertise. Competence should not be hard
> to achieve; and should not be too onerous for one packaging a Debian
> package.
As someone who
a) wrote some of these helper scripts
b) Was recently (6 months ago?) a new developer
I can see where the problem is, a lot of people here have forgotten how hard
it was for them.
It's easier, in any aspect, to tear something down than to build something
up. You don't use helper scripts? Fine, that's your decision, I have no
problem about it.
You don't like helper scripts and whinge about them? Now we have a problem.
Saying that all these scripts are no good is not what I call constructive,
but saying that script Y breaks policy 1.2.3 because it does this instead
of that is constructive.
Also, saying that all Debian developers must know shell scripting back and
front is not a good idea either. How about helping these people?
I remember what I nightmare it was building packages, it still is very
difficult for a lot of people. When deb-make came along I rejoiced, here
was something to make my life easier, now I use debhelper scripts.
I wrote/ported dh_make so that developers after me have an easier life
of making packages. It's not complete, it's not in its final form, but
it should at least give them a start.
I see this email list providing two basic "services" for me and other
developers. The first is that dh_make and friends may not meet the
policy, we need to know where these differences are.
The second is more clarification of the policy and associated documents.
There's nothing like an implementation of a standard to give the standard
a good workout; ask anyone who has written a program using network
protocols. And yes, I will email specifics that, IMHO, need a bit of
work, not just saying "the policies are imcomplete".
I think a lot of us have forgotten the developers out there, trying to package
stuff correctly but not sure how.
- Craig
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