Bug#544981: debian-policy: Discourage native packages that are not tightly specific to Debian
reassign 544981 developers-reference
retitle 544981 Discourage native packages that are not tightly specific to Debian
thanks
Emilio Pozuelo Monfort <pochu@debian.org> writes:
> 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.
> The motivations for discouraging native packages not Debian specific are
> that it makes it harder for other parties to make advantage of it. For
> example, they would find new "upstream" releases that fixed Debian
> packaging bugs, or that were NMUs. Also, where should they report bugs?
> In bugs.debian.org?
> Native packages make sense when the package is pretty much only useful
> for Debian (and Debian derivatives), e.g. dpkg or apt, but not for
> unrelated packages.
After reviewing the bug log again, I think this is a best practices issue
and Policy isn't the best place to talk about this. I'm accordingly
reassigning this bug to the Developer's Reference, which I think is a
better place to document the issues and tradeoffs.
I do think this is a good thing to document, since it comes up all the
time in -mentors.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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