Re: How do I find out where a package came from?

[jereme <jereme@rmcnet.cc>]

Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:

> On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 09:59:13PM -0500, jereme wrote:
> > You can check the file:
> > 
> > /usr/share/doc/package/copyright
> > 
> > Debian policy say that this file has to exist for all official debs.
> > 
> > also:
> > 
> > "In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
> > (if any) were obtained. It should name the original authors of the
> > package and the Debian maintainer(s) who were involved with its
> > creation."
> > 
> > So my thought is, if the file doesn't exists, you know you didn't get
> > the package from Debian, (it would register as a bug).  And if it
> > *does* exist, it will provide you enough info to determine if it came
> > from the Debian achive or from an external source.
> 
> That's unlikely to help, really. External packages tend to have
> debian/copyright anyway, and if they were based on a real Debian package
> it's pretty rare that anyone would bother to change the copyright file
> to indicate that it's not part of the Debian archive any more.

Oh well, it seamed reasonable :)  Thanks for the correction, it is
always appreciated.

I guess I never considered that external packagers would rework debian
package, I just assumed they would create them from scratch but it
makes sense now that you point it out.  I guess they wouldn't likely
clean up the old copyright file, too bad really.

So is the OP out of luck?  I guess you could just hand check version
and maybe md5sums, etc.




-jereme

-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Jereme Corrado <jereme@restorative-management.com>
System Administrator
Restorative Management Corp.

gpg: 1024D/9C39E1F0