Re: Mangling other people's code
Although I'm the "culprit" in the second case, I don't have in any way
a problem with such a statement. The problem I mainly see is that who
will judge the necessacity of the change?
If as part of enhancements, bug fixing, performance improvements,
etc., code changes are justified (or though of as being helpful as
part of the process) according to the current maintainer(s) and say a
year later the original author wants to do some work, to which extend
does the latter have a right to complain?
Thanks,
Ardo
ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk (Ian Jackson) writes:
> For the second time recently I've wanted to do a bit of work on a
> package I wrote which others have been making releases of, and find
> that substantial and unwarranted reorganisations have taken place
> which make the job a lot harder.
>
> The first case was dpkg, whose build system has been replaced with a
> fragile Byzantine monstrosity which depends on libtool and automake
> and is the source of several bug reports. Also, a directory was
> renamed without rhyme or reason ! I intend (when I have some tuits)
> to undo all that and go back to the previous arrangements.
>
> The second case was debiandoc-sgml, where the current maintainer or
> one of their predecessors (I gave the package away) has completely
> changed the layout of the code in the backends.
>
> Does the policy list think it would be a good idea to add a piece to
> the policy manual asking maintainers who inherit a package and
> uploaders of NMU's not to change the layout, structure or style of the
> source code unless it is really necessary ?
>
> Thanks,
> Ian.
>
>
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--
Ardo van Rangelrooij
home email: avrangel@flevonet.nl, ardo@debian.org
home page: http://www.tip.nl/users/ardo.van.rangelrooij
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