Bug#466550: Please clarify the get-orig-source target stated in Policy 4.9
On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:01:18 -0500, Andres Mejia <mcitadel@gmail.com> said:
> I would like to add what Russ Allbery wrote.
> On Tuesday 19 February 2008 1:47:25 am Russ Allbery wrote:
> . . .
>> Personally, I've always read it has emphasizing an entirely different
>> part than what people are talking about here. Rather than focusing
>> on the current version bit, I always focused on the "does any
>> necessary rearrangement to turn it into the original source tar file
>> format described below" bit. I provide this target only for my
>> packages that require repackaging of the upstream source as a way of
>> automating that repackaging.
> . . .
> When considering the phrase in policy "...does any necessary
> rearrangement to turn it into the original source tar file format...",
> it makes more sense when it refers to the original source tar file of
> the source package in Debian (or will be in Debian), and the original
> source tarball would be at a particular version, and thus the
> get-orig-source should generate that particular version of the
> original source tarball of the source package in Debian.
While this jells with my recollection of the intent of the
target, the question now is whether this directive actually makes sense
as policy at this point. It obviously does not reflect common
practice, since the common practice is not to implement this
target. There is no deep scaffolding that depends on this target, and
indeed, at this point, there does not appear to be a consensus about
what this target should do, and whether it is in fact useful.
My suggestion is that we pare policy down, and remove this
mostly useless and mostly ignored rule.
manoj
--
Dyslexia means never having to say that you're ysror.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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