Re: DEP-5 meta: New co-driver; current issues
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 08:00:49AM +0000, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> On 2010-08-12, Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> wrote:
> > * Various things are easier if debian/copyright can be parsed and
> > interpreted by software, rather than being free-form text. For
> > example, answering questions like "what stuff is GPLv2 only,
> > and therefore incompatible with GPLv3?".
> This is quite useless as long as we are making copyright files for
> sourcefiles.
> source foo produces a library and some tools
> the files ending up in the library is lgplv2+
> the files ending up in the tools (executables) are gplv2only
> and then a different gplv3+ app also uses libfoo. should this then be
> marked as a "problem" ?
If someone is interested in addressing this limitation of source-based
license tracking, it should be very possible to write something that
integrates with a build system to calculate the effective license of a
binary based on already-present information about make dependencies; or to
annotate the binaries themselves with ELF notes that can be analyzed prior
to stripping the binaries for packaging, if you want to avoid a dependency
on a particular build system (make). And with such a tool in hand, one
might even write a further tool to transform a sourceful debian/copyright
into an accurate per-binary copyright file.
One or more of these tools might make an interesting GSoC project for
someone next year. But in any event, the absence of such tools today is no
reason not to provide a structure for the sourceful license information
we're recording today.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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