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Re: Native packages, broken uploads, and debian policy



On Sat, 03 Feb 2001, Brian May wrote:
> So obviously 1 is not relevant but 2 still is. eg. consider a package
> that was built against a buggy library, and the package has to be
> rebuilt in order to fix the problem. No source needs to change, so
> updating the version number is (IMHO) an overkill.

Well, you're right in the overkill comment, but I wonder what would be
better in the long run: make it easy to detect broken packaging (everything
gets dumped into the .tar.gz, which requires a full source upload in the
next version or revision -- and if the maintainer doesn't notice, the next,
and the next, and the next...), or keep the possibility of adding debian
revisions to native packages.

There are about 388 binary native packages in Debian and non-free (sid)
right now, which I'd guess means no more than 300 native source packages. If
the number of mispackaged uploads is as big as I've been told (about 10 per
dinstall run, was it?) I'd have to say we should give priority to fixing the
mess.

I can think of no other way to actually detect if a package should be native
or not :( So if a native package can have a debian revision, the brokenness
will continue.

> /home/bam/source/notmine/libpam-heimdal_1.0!1_i386.changes 

IMHO we should solve the dillema of adding revision numbering to
.orig.tar.gz first (due to package pools), and maybe include in that
solution this idea of yours. But this is somehow outside the scope of this
thread.

As for autobuilders, binary NMUs and NMUs, the present solution (append .0#)
to the full version number (upstream + debian revision, if it exists) works
and causes no source headaches for the vast majority of the packages. 

I don't have hard numbers, but native source packages should be less than
10% of the packages in Debian and non-free, and they are NOT among the
biggest in size, either. IMHO that means we can consider the possibility of
taking a non-perfect solution (forbid debian revisions to native packages)
in order to fix the bigger problem.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh

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