[Scummvm-devel] Debian packaging

Tore Anderson tore at linpro.no
Thu Oct 24 02:22:02 CEST 2002


Hi all,

I'm the new Debian maintainer. :-)

I would like to see some changes in the CVS with regard to the Debian
packaging scripts.

To be short: I don't want you to distribute tarballs with a directory
named «debian» in the top level of the source tree.

The reason is simple; the Debian-specific parts of the package is
usually added through a patch to the pristine tarball as released by
the upstream[0] developers. If there's bugs in the Debian-specific code,
only the patch has to be changed, and there won't be any need to remirror
the upstream tarball all over the globe.

Having the debian/-directory in the tarball is therefore an annoyance,
as it hinders the preferred way to do it. A possibility is of course
to repack the tarball without this dir, but then the tarball is no longer
the exact same as the upstream one; and I want users to be able to get
the original tarball from whatever Debian mirror they'd like, if for
example SourceForge's down.

I see the value in providing a debian/-directory for the users who'd like
to check out a CVS tree, and build a Debian package from that code base.
This could easily be accomplished by having «your» debian/-dir moved
to distributions/debian/ or whatever, and have a «deb» target in the
Makefile which moves/symlinks that directory to the top level before
running dpkg-buildpackage.

Does this sound reasonable to you? I will gladly volunteer to maintain
this directory, by the way.

Oh and another thing, I can provide you with .debs for Woody for
various architectures to put on the download page for each release,
if you'd like that.

[0] That's what us Debian-folks call you guys. :-)

Kind regards,
-- 
Tore Anderson






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