Packaging ocPortal
Hello everyone, I'm a developer working for a company called
ocProducts[1], and we write a Free Software content management system
called ocPortal[2] which is released under the FSF and OSI approved
Common Public Attribution License.
As long time Debian users we would love to see ocPortal packaged for
Debian, and have decided to devote some effort to getting it packaged
and compliant. In the worst case we can host our own repository, but we
would ideally like to get into main.
The technical responsibility for this lies with me, but I have a few
queries about the process:
1) The PHP Policy Draft[3] is incomplete, containing many sections with
notes like "XXX: .......". How applicable is the information in this
document? Is is out of date and invalid, or is it correct and
up-to-date, except for the incomplete sections?
2) We are considering integrating Debian package generation into our
regular release process, as we already generate packages for
Installatron and Bitnami. The scripts that manage this are kept in
ocPortal's subversion repository[4]. Would anyone recommend a specific
way to do this? Approaches I can think of include generating an
unmodified tarball and patching it in the package; generating a patched
tarball which can be packaged as-is; maintaining a specialised
repository (eg. to integrate with Git packaging processes). Since we
host ocPortal's SVN repository, we would be able to include most
required changes into the trunk, so patching should be minimal anyway.
3) Should we look for approval from debian-legal now or when the
packaging's done? For the record we have audited the source tree and
removed/replaced anything with unknown or unclear licensing, although
these changes are not in the releases on ocportal.com.
4) Does anyone have suggestions specific to packaging PHP Web-apps, or
should I just plough through the new maintainer's guide?
Thanks in advance,
Chris Warburton
[1] http://www.ocproducts.com
[2] http://www.ocportal.com
[3] http://webapps-common.alioth.debian.org/draft-php/html/
[4] http://ocportal.com:81/svn/svn/4.2.x
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