On Wed, 26 May 2010 23:44:52 +0200 Iustin Pop <iu...@k1024.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 10:34:32PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > > I think the announcement is wrong, we cannot ever expect every > > single package to be touched for any single change. We don't even > > do that when libc changes SONAME - that only affects compiled > > packages, this theoretically affects all source packages which > > means huge numbers of rebuilds and transitions. > > Agreed. > > > There is nothing wrong with a source package that glides through > > several stable releases without needing a rebuild, especially if it > > only builds an Arch:all binary package. As long as it is bug free, > > an ancient standards version alone is not sufficient reason to > > change anything in the package or make any upload just for the sake > > of making an upload. > > But here I disagree. A couple of stable releases is, let's say, 4 > years? In the last four years, there have been significant changes > (advancements?) in the state of Debian packaging. As such, most, if > not all, nontrivial packages would be improved if they're brought up > to date. I can think of a few perl modules that won't need another upload until Perl6 is not only released but sufficiently stable that Perl5 is to be removed. That doesn't look like it will happen within a couple of stable releases, if at all. (It will take us longer to transition from Perl5 than it did for libgtk1.2 and that took more than two stable releases.) Other packages affected could be data packages etc. After Squeeze is released, I'll have half a dozen or more packages that will be the same version in oldstable through to unstable and none of those currently have any bugs or lintian warnings other than an old/ancient standards version or similarly minor issues. None of those would give any benefits *to users* by being "updated" with respect to the packaging. > > debian/source/format cannot become mandatory without causing every > > single source package to be modified. For what? Just to add 6 bytes? > > Mandatory? I agree it shouldn't be mandatory. I would rather propose a > 'W' lintian tag, nothing more, and which will only fire if the last > changelog date is after the date this proposal goes live. If dpkg errors out upon the absence of debian/source/format, then it becomes mandatory by definition - because dpkg would cause a FTBFS through no fault of the package. I don't see any point in threatening to cause so many bugs merely to satisfy the dpkg maintainers. If it is going to be possible for dpkg to consider the absence of debian/source/format as an error, it is SO far ahead into the future that it isn't worth consideration IMHO. So the lack of a debian/source/format file has to remain supported by dpkg for more than a couple of stable releases, maybe with a message but NOT with a failure. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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