Re: Proposal for collaborative maintenance of packages

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Right now, however, when I release an upstream tarball,
> there is a whole bunch of work for the maintainer/DD to
> do .. the set of files in the package may have changed,
> the dependencies may have changed, the documentation
> set may have changed. This is true for any package
> of course .. but this is 150KLOC of source which is
> not built in 'conventional' ways -- it uses a literate
> programming tool and Python scripts, and the bulk
> of the code is in an advanced programming language
> (including some in itself :)

If your upstream software has a good installation procedure - something
like the autotools type with the possibility to change directory
locations at configure time (--with-confdir=/etc/foo and such), adding
or removing files or documentation needs hardly any work of the package
maintainer.  Changed dependencies need just one line in control to be
edited.  

So maybe you can use the interaction with Debian to improve your
program? 

> Would you not trust my DD to check *my* skills at maintaining
> a few lines of Debian packaging script which wraps
> the package of which I'm the upstream author?

Well, yes.  But how's that different to the current procedure - you
create a package, commit yourself to caring for it, and find a sponsor? 

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer