Benjamin Drung <bdr...@debian.org> writes: > Am Samstag, den 04.06.2011, 14:10 +0200 schrieb Gergely Nagy: >> Jonas Smedegaard <d...@jones.dk> writes: >> >> > I have noticed several times package changes like the following (from >> > cairomm entering testing today): >> > >> > * debian/control: >> > - Drop build dependencies on doxygen and graphviz, since upstream >> > now ships the generated documentation >> > >> > >> > Feels wrong to me to redistribute when e.g. html files clearly are not >> > the preferred form of editing for upstream. >> >> To me, that doesn't sound all that troubling: we do use other generated >> files that upstream ships more often than not: configure, Makefile.ins - >> and so on. Though, those are rarely shipped in the binary package, but >> still: we do not build-depend on the tools that generate these. >> >> Technically, upstream could do anything in those files, write them by >> hand instead of generating from configure.ac, and include that in the >> distributed tarball, potentially under a non-free license. >> >> In any case: even if upstream shipts generated content, as long as the >> source is shipped aswell, all is fine and well, in my opinion. The >> _source_ needs to be in the preferred form of modification. If it >> contains generated files aswell, that doesn't matter all that much: the >> source is still there. You just don't have to use it, if the result >> would be the same anyway. > > It's better to build the pre-generated files from source in case you > need to modify the source. It's easier to just modify for example > configure.ac instead of modifying it and figuring out how to rebuild the > pre-generated files, especially when you do security fixes or stable > release updates.
That, I agree with. However, if the upstream build system does not rebuild what needs to be rebuilt when I modify the sources, I'd consider that as a bug, and would make upstream fix it (or at least, try to make him fix it). As a maintainer, I kinda want to know the software's build system well enough to be able to rebuild stuff if so need be, even if I did not do that in the Debian package before. As long as the sources are there, I have the ability to fix a bug directly there. Having generated files there helps until I don't need to regenerate them, thus, I don't see nothing wrong with using them. Much like I don't see an issue with using the autotools generated stuff, nor the graphics, that were exported from an xcf file, for example. I'm not going to build-depend on gimp to be able rebuild graphics. The pngs are fine with me. Corner case, yes, but the point remains. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87aadxfmoc....@luthien.mhp
