Re: debian source format

[richard@sfere.elmail.co.uk (Richard Kettlewell)]

Bruce Perens writes:

>> It's much worse than that. A Debian package may correspond to
>> multiple upstream packages; or even just parts of multiple upstream
>> packages. Once you've downloaded the right ones, you still have to
>> put them back together in the right way.
>
>It's a bad idea to make a debian package out of more than one
>upstream package.  Where these exist, they should be broken up into
>separate packages. On the other hand, it's fine to generate more than
>one binary package from a single source package.

Consider the case where you have one large package which is
distributed in a separate tarfile from a couple of kilobytes worth of
examples (which could conceivably be localted on another ftp site
entirely).  It would be insane for those to be in separate Debian
packages.

My vm package is an example of this.

Another example is procps, which includes in its debian.README file:

    This package was put together by Ian Murdock <imurdock@debian.org>,
    from sources obtained from:
     sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/Misc/ps/procps-0.97.tgz
    
    Changes:
     * added Debian GNU/Linux package maintenance system files
     * replaced w.c with kmem-ps-1.1.88 procw.c

...which is in fact precisely the example I was thinking of.

-- 
Richard Kettlewell
<richard@elmail.co.uk>                   http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/