Sourceless but useless: how about ignoring some irrelevant files instead of repackaging?
Dear all,
in one of the packages I mainatain, upstream left some zlib and ncurses static
libraries for Win32 in the source tarball. Without the copy of the zlib and
ncurses sources.
Now I will have to add a lot of stuff to debian/copyright, make a “dfsg”
tarball, provide a get-orig-source target in debian/rules, and write a
README.source file to comply with the Policy, and do the repackaging dance at
each new upstream release. This is not the way I have fun.
Alternatively, I can of course ask Upstream to remove the Windows binaries, but
how can I convince him that we hurt our users by leaving these files in the
Debian source packages, while the sources of zlib and ncurses are actually
distributed by Debian together with the sources of his program?
I really wish that we could open a discussion on the possibility to ignore some
legally redistributable source-less files that are in the .orig.tar.gz upstream
archive, provided that we do not include them in our binary packages nor use
them at build time. This could also include source-less PDF files, which are
another time sink in the field where I do my packaging.
Since this subjet is potentially difficult to discuss, I will refrain to post
more than once a day in this thread and invite everybody to do so as well.
Also, I am not subscribed to this list, so please CC me for the answers.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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