Re: Sourceless but useless: how about ignoring some irrelevant files instead of repackaging?

[James Westby <jw+debian@jameswestby.net>]

On Tue Sep 08 00:16:52 +0100 2009 Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 07, 2009 at 09:01:04PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Why would you have to add anything to debian/copyright?  debian/copyright is
> for describing the copyright and license of things in the package.  You
> don't need to put information here about things that are explicitly *not* in
> the package.

Hi,

6.7.8.2 of http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-origtargz
states

  A repackaged .orig.tar.gz

     1. should be documented in the resulting source package. Detailed information on how the
        repackaged source was obtained, and on how this can be reproduced should be provided
        in debian/copyright. [...]

Yes, it's not policy, but if you disagree please request that this be removed
from the dev-ref so that new developers aren't encouraged to do more work
that you don't consider to be necessary.

Thanks,

James