Sorry, I did not know that a package rename is such complicated in
Debian, in Ubuntu it is processed very quickly. Also I did not know that
there is a Build-Conflicts concept. This is a great thing for such a
situation.
In the last days I looked for you on IRC (#ubuntu-devel) and did not
find you. So I talked with Ubuntu developers and no one has given me any
hint that package renaming is too complex for Debian or that a
Build-Conflicts would be a much easier solution. They even did not find
it a good idea to have a physical package named foomatic-db and a
virtual package with the same name.
The scenario was that the build process started with foomatic-db (the
XMLs) not installed and foomatic-db-compressed-ppds installed. The
latter is not conflicting with the build process, only not containing
the needed files. This can either have happened that
foomatic-db-compressed-ppds got already installed with the base system
of the chroot and so the build dependency "foomatic-db" was already
fulfilled when the process reached the step of installing the build
dependencies or the buildd (or apt) realy gave priority to the virtual
package on the "foomatic-db" install request.
Now there are two reasons for a package to depend on foomatic-db, once,
the need of PPD files for a printer driver delivered by the package (the
most common case) and second, the need of the Foomatic XML files to
pre-build PPD files for a compressed PPD package to be shipped with the
driver. The latter is always a build dependency and not a runtime
dependency, with this the foomatic-db XML package has the character of a
-dev package. My concept was then to use the name "foomatic-db" as all
the time before to get PPD files and to introduce a new name
"foomatic-db-xml" to explicitly request XML files.
So I think, one thing I could do in Ubuntu is to rename foomatic-db-xml
back to foomatic-db and use a build conflict against
foomatic-db-compressed-ppds in all driver packages which now depend on
foomatic-db-xml. How is this working exactly. Is it simply setting
Build-Depends: foomatic-db
Build-Conflicts: foomatic-db-compressed-ppds
in each package which needs the Foomatic XML database for building? Does
the buildd then uninstall foomatic-db-compressed-ppds (if it got already
installed with the base system) and then install foomatic-db (the XML
database)?
After having changed all driver packages which currently depend on
foomatic-db-xml I would rename that back to foomatic-db (there was no
release inbetween, so the transitional package foomatic-db-xml could be
removed before release of Ubuntu Oneiric).
Till
On 07/30/2011 03:56 PM, Didier Raboud wrote:
Hi Till,
I noticed your 20110722-0ubuntu2 [0] upload on Ubuntu and I must say
that I am
far from happy with this change mostly because it happenned without any
previous discussion (although I was available on IRC and email the whole
week).
Any binary package rename in Debian takes time (NEW processing,
although fast
these days). Given all sorts of issues renames bring, that's never a
thing I
do easily.
Furthermore, I don't think the problem it wants to address is correctly
adressed by this change: if the buildds pull -compresed-ppds when they
should
not, then adding Build-Conflicts to the concerned packages is the
right thing
to do, I think. So unless you can convince me otherwise, I am not
ready to
merge you binary package rename.
Some more things about the Git repository:I would really appreciate if
you
could "git-import-orig" the upstream releases before pushing your
changes to
the master branch, that really helps in separating the upstream
changes from
the debian/ work.
Finally, I really hope we can make our collaboration better; that means
communication and coordination. As I already offerred (and will
continue to
do), I would be more than happy to review your changes and upload them to
Debian directly, from which Ubuntu would only have to sync. I the current
times of non-freeze on both sides, not doing so is a waste of forces I
think.
I am still convinced that this would be a work reduction for both of us.
Cheers,
OdyX
[0] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/foomatic-
db.git;a=commit;h=bcdf7de0088a48b17d648d27666d120feb322c19