packaging manual/ policy seem to *discourage* pristine source

[Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>]

I think there are bugs in the packaging manual regarding pristine
source:

3.3. Source packages as archives
[...]
     Original source archive - `<package>_<upstream-version>.orig.tar.gz'
          This is a compressed (with `gzip -9') `tar' file containing the
          source code from the upstream authors of the program. The tarfile
          unpacks into a directory `<package>-<upstream-version>.orig', and
          does not contain files anywhere other than in there or in its
          subdirectories.

A comment from Oliver Elphick:

| In order to achieve this, I have to rename the top-level directory,
| which, as you have seen, alters the size of the source tar file.
| The requirement to use gzip -9 would also alter the tar file size,
| if the upstream maintainers had not used -9 (or had used compress or
| bzip).

Given this interpretation, which I believe is correct, the packaging
manual actively *discourages* pristine upstream source.

In fact, dpkg-source seems to be able to deal with *any* top level
directory name (so long as it is unique and all files are within that
directory).

Also, as discussed recently, recompressing upstream source is not
really enough justification for dirtying the upstream source.

Moreover, we see nothing in the Debian Policy stating that maintainers
*should* (not must) use upstream source when possible.  I believe this
is an error.

Rationale: pristine upstream source allows users to apply .diffs with
confidence, to download the .orig.tar.gz files from other locations,
and ensures that in fact the Debian version is not too badly forked
from the upstream version.  It also has possible benefits such as
detached signatures up compressed tarballs, etc.

--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>