Re: Packaging several tiny upstrem packages in a single Debian package

[Ole Streicher <olebole@debian.org>]

Dear Paride,

Paride Legovini <pl@ninthfloor.org> writes:
> I was thinking of packaging them together, in a single Debian package,
> named for example ‘miniseed-tools’ or ‘seiscode-tools’ (suggestions are
> welcome). I know this is not very commonly done in Debian, but I know
> there are cases where is has been done. Should this be done, mseed2sac
> and sac2mseed would become dummy transitional packages.
>
> Before I start to work in this direction, what do you think of this
> idea?

I personally would prefer to keep them separated, especially when
upstream keeps them separate. Then you don't need to fiddle with the
version numbers, updates of individual packages etc. Better discuss this
with upstream first -- they may have a good reason to keep them
separate, and as a rule of thumb I would usually follow them.

This also makes your packages more standard on the upstream side, and
keeping the standard is alsways a good thing for potential team
maintenance.

And I don't see the disadvantage to have many source packages instead of
maintaining a collection by yourself.

> Should we decide this is not the best approach, I think the alternative
> is packaging them individually and then prepare a metapackage which
> depends/recommends all of them.

This seems reasonable then.

Cheers

Ole