Re: upstream field in package description
Es geschah am Mittwoch 01 Juni 2005 01:33 als Bill Allombert schrieb:
> 1) Debian Policy mandate the information in the copyright file already:
>
> 12.5. Copyright information
> ---------------------------
> ...
>
> In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
> (if any) were obtained. It should name the original authors of the
> package and the Debian maintainer(s) who were involved with its
> creation.
Not sufficient IMO. Again; you need to download and/or install the package to
get that information.
> 2) Developers-reference propose the following:
>
>
> 6.2.4. Upstream home page
> -------------------------
>
> We recommend that you add the URL for the package's home page to the
> package description in `debian/control'. This information should be
> added at the end of description, using the following format:
>
> .
> Homepage: http://some-project.some-place.org/
The 'good' thing about recommendations is that they can be ignored so easily
and in this case this specific recommendation is ignored by the majority of
all Debian packages!
> 3) Information about upstream website tend to get outdated, so stable
> packages are likely to include outdated informations.
Right, upstream websites get outdated and so do packages. Better a pointer to
an old webpage than none at all. This is not an argument for me at all!
> The Developers-reference proposal allow a stable user to go to
> package.debian.org to read the description of the unstable version of
> the package and get a more up-to-date information.
... where he could also read a "Upstream-Source: " field generated
information...
> 4) Some upstream authors do not want their email address to be exposed.
> To their defense, someone buying the getithere.org domain might be
> surprised to receive spams addressed to the foocrew user.
Upstream-Source: neglected
or
Upstream-Source: undesired
or even
Upstream-Author: restricted
or whatever. All those contra arguments depend on a clear minority of packages
and as you can see can still live with my proposal. That missing upstream
information is really annoying!
I hope you guys change your mind!
CU
Christian
P.S. Please CC me, I'm offlist !
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