Bug#54002: PROPOSAL] permit use of bzip2 for source packages

[Nicolás Lichtmaier <nick@debian.org>]

> > > > > The version of dpkg that I have in experiemental allows the use of bz2 for
> > > > > dpkg-source without breaking the format.
> > > > 
> > > >  Is there any reason for not having that bzip2 support in the potato
> > > > version?
> > > 
> > > We don't want to introduce anything like this into potato as part of dpkg,
> > > this close to release. It can wait till woody. Mainly because it requires
> > > some changes on the archive side to be able to handle it (ie. if you
> > > switch to .bz2, the archive needs to be able to make the switch). AFAIK,
> > > the archive scripts expect .gz for diffs, and .tar.gz for tarballs.
> > 
> >  To have a dpkg in stable that can extract unstable source packages is a
> > must. Don't you think? And I guess it's very little new code...
> 
> dpkg-dev is pretty independant of the release. It is quite ok to run
> dpkg-dev from woody, with dpkg from potato (speaking in a future tense,
> but I suspect the same is true of slink.spkg and potato.dpkg-dev).
> 
> We cannot have this feature at all until the archive scripts can handle
> it, and changing those so close to a release is my main concern. Let's get
> things out the door before trying to move forward on this.
> 
> Potato releases soon, no harm in patience on a matter like this :)

 This will create a `FAQ item'... =)

 Perhaps the current dpkg-src could have code to DETECT bzip2 and print a
friendly error message... "This version does not yet support bzip2
compressed source packages, please upgrade dpkg-dev from...".