Hello.

I noticed that many new maintainers (me too) often made mistake and
built debian-native packages instead of normal one (those with .diff.gz).
In fact, not only new maintainers are making this mistake. I've seen some
changelogs with the following text:

* Doh! I don't know how it happened, but previous package was built as nativ
e

I suppose that normal packages are more than 90% of all.

So why don't we provide some additional header or file in debian subdirector
y
to mark native packages?

I mean we've got many useful utilities used to build packages. 
So maybe dh_make should add additional template file (or header).
Something like debian/native.ex with the following information:

# If you intend to build native package, please rename this file to
# native (without suffix), otherwise just delete it.

Then linda and lintian could easily check if this file exist, and if
not, then they could check if package contains .diff.gz file.
If not -> show error/warning.

This could be handled with some header in control file instead of
additional file in debian subdirectory. I don't know... maybe some
Native: yes/no.

Well that's my suggestion only, I'm not DD and I'm not even good
programmer, so I probably won't provide any code to acomplish it, but
maybe someone else could be so kindly and code it.

I'll be thankful for comments.
For me it would be very useful, because I always check packages with
linda/lintian, and not always notice that there is no diff.gz file.
I suppose that there is more such people.

regards
fEnIo

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Scripsit Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <fenio@o2.pl>

> So why don't we provide some additional header or file in debian subdirect
ory
> to mark native packages?

Something like making dpkg-source -b refuse to build a native source
package if the version number contains a dash (unless some force
option is given)?

There are 423 .tar.gz files in the current unstable Sources file that
wouldn't have been built then. Many of them look like they are not
really Debian native, and not really numbered -1 upstream either.

> but maybe someone else could be so kindly and code it.

The first step would be to muster a consensus that it is indeed always
wrong to have no .diff.gz for a package with an upstream author
outside Debian. I'm not quite sure such a consensus exists today.

--
Henning Makholm                                      "Punctuation, is? fun!"


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I won't say anything useful here, but simply add a "Me too!". I would
say the following two statements always hold:

version contains '-' implies not Debian native (i.e. orig/diff)
not (version contains '-') implies Debian native (i.e. tar.gz)

If either of these fails, I think lintian/linda should definitely
complain. Can anyone think of a counterexample?

Cheers,
Shaun


On Mon April 12, 2004 12h32, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <fenio@o2.pl>
> 
>
> Something like making dpkg-source -b refuse to build a native
> source package if the version number contains a dash (unless some
> force option is given)?
>
> There are 423 .tar.gz files in the current unstable Sources file
> that wouldn't have been built then. Many of them look like they are
> not really Debian native, and not really numbered -1 upstream
> either.
> 
>
> The first step would be to muster a consensus that it is indeed
> always wrong to have no .diff.gz for a package with an upstream
> author outside Debian. I'm not quite sure such a consensus exists
> today.


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On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 08:32:10PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: 
> 
> The first step would be to muster a consensus that it is indeed always
> wrong to have no .diff.gz for a package with an upstream author
> outside Debian. I'm not quite sure such a consensus exists today.

A more accurate statement would be it is always wrong to have no
.diff.gz unless the package is only useful for Debian. Not just with an
upstream author outside Debian. There are very few packages in Debian
that should be native.

Chris

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 08:54:16PM +0200, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
> Then linda and lintian could easily check if this file exist, and if
> not, then they could check if package contains .diff.gz file.
> If not -> show error/warning.

See #216327, but the bug depends on a proper implementation of source
package lintian overrides, which isn't yet finished.

--Jeroen

-- 
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Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 08:32:10PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: 
> 
> The first step would be to muster a consensus that it is indeed always
> wrong to have no .diff.gz for a package with an upstream author
> outside Debian. I'm not quite sure such a consensus exists today.

Well as far as I remember Mentors on debian-mentors always ask people to
make non-native packages. In fact that should be probably default
behaviour. There is no reason to build native packages except
situations where program is really Debian specific.

Yeah, I know that sometimes DD's contributes to external projects, but
from my experience having upstream debian/* subdirectory often makes
more trouble than advantages. Sometimes upstream authors release new
version, and debian/* is outdated. Then I have to create diff.gz even
so.

My conclusion is that if non-native packages should be default ones,
then why don't we provide some warnings if someone made native packages
by mistake? 

That won't hurt to do `touch debian/native` for natives, but it hurts
when someone won't notice that he made native by mistake.

regards
fEnIo

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On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 10:52:10PM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote: 
> 
> See #216327, but the bug depends on a proper implementation of source
> package lintian overrides, which isn't yet finished.

Doh, how could I miss it :/
I've searched through lintian/linda's bugs, but didn't notice it.

Well ok, that's what I wanted to see.
Thanks for pointing it out to me.

regards
fEnIo


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Hi,

probably just a corner case, but for packages that happen to have no
useful .tar.gz.orig (either because it is distributed as
.zip.foo.rar.uuenc.gpg or because a lot of stuff has to be removed for
legal reasons), it should be ok for the maintainer to just make one
.tar.gz file, and not to "invent" a diff. As a compromise, a
debian/not_native file to stop lintian/linda from complaining is ok I
guess.

(And maybe a debian/really_native for a debian-native package whose
maintainer - for some wired reason - prefers to have a
.diff.gz/tar.gz.orig source package)

nomeata

Am Mo, den 12.04.2004 schrieb Shaun Jackman um 22:28:
> I won't say anything useful here, but simply add a "Me too!". I would 
> say the following two statements always hold:
> 
> 	version contains '-' implies not Debian native (i.e. orig/diff)
> 	not (version contains '-') implies Debian native (i.e. tar.gz)
> 
> If either of these fails, I think lintian/linda should definitely 
> complain. Can anyone think of a counterexample?
> 
> Cheers,
> Shaun
> 
> 
> On Mon April 12, 2004 12h32, Henning Makholm wrote: 
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Debian Developer
nomeata@debian.org | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C
JID: joachimbreitner@amessage.de | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata

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Hi,

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 01:28:35PM -0700, Shaun Jackman wrote:
> I won't say anything useful here, but simply add a "Me too!". I would
> say the following two statements always hold:
>
> 	version contains '-' implies not Debian native (i.e. orig/diff)
> 	not (version contains '-') implies Debian native (i.e. tar.gz)
>
> If either of these fails, I think lintian/linda should definitely
> complain. Can anyone think of a counterexample?

Yes. Native package foo version 1.2.3 would be source-NMUed as
1.2.3-0.1, and bin-NMUed as 1.2.3-0.0.1.

Cheers,

Nicolas

PS:
Because it is hard to read.
Why should I not answer above the questions?


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Scripsit Joachim Breitner <nomeata@debian.org>

> probably just a corner case, but for packages that happen to have no
> useful .tar.gz.orig (either because it is distributed as
> .zip.foo.rar.uuenc.gpg or because a lot of stuff has to be removed for
> legal reasons), it should be ok for the maintainer to just make one
> .tar.gz file, and not to "invent" a diff.

I respectfully disagree. It is common courtesy to be open about what
is the source file distributed by upstream and what is Debian's
additions and modification. It makes life easier for anyone who cares
about the difference and does not make life siginificantly harder for
anyone.

Who cares about the difference, then? Well,

1. The upstream author cares, if he is curious about how we're
treating his brainchild.

2. The next maintainer (or NMUer) will care, as he tries to make sense
of the packaging.

3. A technically savvy user cares, if he is trying to figure out why
the Debian package behaves differently from a package of the
software on another host - or if he is trying to decide whether to
report a bug (with a patch?) to the Debian BTS or directly
upstream.

4. A paranoid user will care, if he has spent a lot of effort auditing
the upstream source code for his own FooOS build and now wants to
verify that the Debian package is trustworthy.

5. Non-Debian users care that Debian offers a well-organised archive
of upstream sources of free software, which can often be compiled
on other platforms. This is kind of peripheral to the value we add,
but it is immensely useful at times (say, when I needed to compile
VCG on a RedHat machine, the upstream ftp site was dead, and the
Debian archive was the only place where source could be found). But
it only works well if one can get *original* source without added
debianisms that cannot easily be found or rolled back.

On the other hand, I don't see any material advantage in not
distinguishing between the original and Debian additions.

--
Henning Makholm                        "Nej, hvor er vi altså heldige! Længe
leve vor Buxgører Sansibar Bastelvel!"


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