Re: Recommending get-orig-source for packages ?

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Stuart Prescott <stuart@debian.org> writes:

> In the current copyright-format/1.0, people are including repackaging
> information with a Comment field, as an explanatory text to the Source
> field or with some other ad hoc field name.

By my reading of ‘copyright-format/1.0’ (the “Machine-readable
debian/copyright file” specification), the normative place for that
information is the “Source” field:

    Source

        Formatted text, no synopsis: an explanation of where the
        upstream source came from. Typically this would be a URL, but it
        might be a free-form explanation. The Debian Policy section 12.5
        requires this information unless there are no upstream sources,
        which is mainly the case for native Debian packages. If the
        upstream source has been modified to remove non-free parts, that
        should be explained in this field.

Because of that explicit specification, and that such repacking needs to
be in an automated program or configuration anyway and explained in the
“Source” field, I think adding another special place for this
information is unnecessary duplication.

> Consolidating this information in one place seems like a good idea
> which was the very rationale behind #413320 and then these uscan
> improvements.

That's the first I'd heard of bug#413320 (thank you for bringing it to
my attention). It's a shame that in the intervening years these
contradictions between different parts of policy and tools have grown.

-- 
 \         “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the |
  `\                  occurrence of the improbable.” —Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney