Re: texinfo/info packages and TeX live
# now that we're talking about an NMU, I might as well bump the
# severity now
severity 320413 serious
stop
Julian Gilbey <jdg@polya.uklinux.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 08:54:07AM +0200, Frank K?ster wrote:
>> Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:
>>
>> > texinfo (4.8-0.1) unstable; urgency=low
>> >
>> > * NMU
>>
>> I would prefer to indicate why we NMU, like "to adress bug #..)
>>
>
> Also, the general principle about NMUs is to make as few changes as
> possible to the package to fix the specific bug in question. If the
> maintainer is happy for you to make more changes or to adopt the
> package, fine, otherwise stick to the bare minimum (i.e., no
> unnecessary packaging changes, no unnecessary changes to debian/rules,
> etc.).
In general I agree. In this particular case, however, it might be a
little different.
First of all, the purpose of the NMU requires to upload a new upstream
version¹. Consequently, the number of changes isn't very small,
anyway. Adding a line to debian/rules like "(cd doc; make html)" and a
corresponding entry in changelog doesn't make it more difficult to read
the differences in a patch file.
Second, it seems as if Josip is no longer interested in the package, and
hasn't been for quite a while. I have suggested earlier that Norbert
should contact him and ask whether Josip would want to give the package
away, and that Norbert prepare a texinfo package from the texlive
sources that can cleanly replace the old texinfo package (while the
others usually conflict with the respective traditional, teTeX-based
packages, or aren't built at all). This package is the result, but
unfortunately Josip has not reacted at all. As I see now, he hasn't
reacted to the last two RC bugs at all, either. Is he MIA - I guess not
generally.
Under these circumstances, I think the reasons for the usual NMU rules
don't hold, or at least aren't particularly strong: If Josip decides to
work on the package again, he'll have to invest time in getting
up-to-date, anyway (AFAICS there are no patches for the last NMU's,
although one is trivial). Norbert, you should provide one, only for the
Debian-specific parts, and ideally comparing the renamed files with the
right original.
And I'll ask mia@qa.debian.org about Josip.
Regards, Frank
While thinking about this and looking more closely at the package, I
found that Josip has changed some files provided by upstream in the
diff.gz. Norbert, you should investigate what the purpose of these
fixes are, whether they are Debian-specific or not, and whether they are
already incorporated upstream. And you should put information about
your action in the changelog.
¹unless you'd want to go the hard way and backport the missing script to
4.7, and do all the checks that it does work. I wouldn't recommend that.
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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