On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 07:17:16PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote: > Luk Claes wrote: > > Neil Williams wrote: > >> i.e. native should be a last resort - used only when it is all but > >> impossible for the package to be used outside Debian or some distro > >> fundamentally based on Debian like Ubuntu. > >> > > I thought this consensus was already a fact and that some maintainers > > just disagree and nobody forced them to change yet... > > > > The reasons why it shouldn't be a native package IMHO: > > * it's not specific to Debian > > * it wastes bandwidth as every upload contains all the sources > > * it's confusing for newcomers > > * it's error prone for NMUs and security updates > > I'd just add: > * it isn't in the spirit of free software to make it hard for others to > use the code - making a package Debian-native when it could work on any > GNU/Linux or POSIX platform makes it unnecessarily hard for a Fedora or > Gentoo user etc. to package the code and maintain it in their own > distro.
Sorry, but that's totally wrong. Nobody every told anyone to use the debian/ directory for anything. > How are they to know whether the latest native version is Debian > specific or contains useful "upstream" improvements? By reading debian/changelog -- that's what it's for! > There is plenty of free hosting that could be used for this code - SF is > probably the most common, berlios another. gdome2-xslt isn't the only package that's debian-native while not being debian-specific. Offlineimap comes to mind; I did also consider making nbd a native package once, since releasing nbd twice (once upstream and once in Debian, five seconds later) is silly. I didn't do so, because it's already on SF where people will expect it anyway, so that wouldn't reduce the work; but if I could get away with no longer releasing on SF, I would most likely turn it into a native package. There's no reason why we should force maintainers to do more work to upload their software twice, just because some people think doing a native package for non-debian-specific code is ugly. It isn't. -- <Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
