Bug#544981: debian-policy: Discourage native packages that are not tightly specific to Debian
Wouter Verhelst wrote:
Given the recent thread in debian-devel[1], I think we should document in
policy that packages that are not tightly related to Debian shouldn't be
native.
*sigh*
So I spent a whole subthread trying to explain that I think this is
*not* true, and seemed to get consensus on that, and now you want to get
this into policy?
Consensus is a big word, you managed to get people agree that if
maintainers really considered all the downsides even our complaints from
time to time that it would be acceptable...
Gee.
Whether or not a native package makes sense should be the maintainer's
prerogative, not decided by policy. As I said in the thread on -devel,
there can be good reasons for making a package native. E.g., the
maintainer doesn't have to deal with two releases (one upstream and one
for debian) for every code change, but can just do one; there is
immediate use of a translation team; releases are at least tested on
Debian's architectures when they are released; etc.
When using a non-native package, the maintainer does not have to do any
separate release as the upstream tarball is in orig.tar.gz
The translation team focuses on native packages (next to other Debian
specific translation), because it does not have the resources to do all
of it and native packages are considered Debian specific... so this is
actually in some kind abusing the translation team if the package does
not have to be native.
The other points are also void AFAICS.
There are also obvious downsides to doing so, and it's probably a good
idea to document these somewhere (though I doubt policy is the place for
that; this is more something for the devref). However, outright claiming
that it should not be done, will a) make a bunch of packages
insta-buggy (which is bad, as far as policy is concerned), and b) is not
the right thing to do, IMO.
They are already buggy IMHO.
Also, where should they report bugs? In bugs.debian.org?
Yes, why not?
Sure, I don't see a problem there.
It is okay to point out what the effect will be of making a package
native, so that a maintainer knows what he's getting him- or herself
into. It is not okay to force a particular workflow on a maintainer just
because *you* think it's not a good workflow.
I don't understand what the package format has to do with the work flow?
Cheers
Luk
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