>>>>> "Thorsten" == Thorsten Glaser <t...@debian.org> writes:
Thorsten> I would very much like to argue that not using dh is not a
Thorsten> bug, but Joey Hess, with his credentials ☺, did that
Thorsten> already (and much better than I could):
Thorsten> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/80_percent/
He doesn't actually make that argument.
>Not being part of Debian anymore, I'm in the position of needing to
>point out something important about it anyway. So this post is less
>about pointing in a specific direction as giving a different angle to
>think about things.
He argues that dh may have evolved to be around a 96% solution at this
point.
That's entirely consistent with the idea that not using dh could be a
bug absent an exceptional situation. (Appologies for not looking up the
wording from Ian's message; I mean what Ian calls unusual here.)
Thorsten> tl;dr: dh started as 80% solution, it’s maybe an 96%
Thorsten> solution now, but it’s not intended as, and won’t be, a
Thorsten> 100% solution.
Nor have we claimed that it is.
There are several reasons for not using dh we've already identified.
Thorsten> I’d also throw in that monocultures are not good, and that
Thorsten> people in general are happier when they aren’t forced into
Thorsten> anything.
Agreed.
Working on new tooling clearly needs to be one of the reasons for not
using dh to allow for development of new things.
Thorsten> Just yesterday I had a bug that wouldn’t have
Thorsten> happened with a non-dh7 rules file (incidentally, ordering
Thorsten> matters, so I had to add a call to mkdir -p
Thorsten> debian/binarypackagename/some/directory into an over‐
Thorsten> ride). And finally, rules with too many overrides are
Thorsten> actually worse readable than classic debhelper style.
Thorsten> I also have packages where the automatic build system
Thorsten> detection of dh is wrong. Understandably wrong, but wrong
Thorsten> nevertheless.
Thorsten> Oh, and… to learn, automagisms are not so good, because
Thorsten> you don’t see what’s going on, and can’t change it on an
Thorsten> intuitive or more fine-granular level (though with
Thorsten> DH_VERBOSE=1 mandated by default by recent Policy changes,
Thorsten> this may have improved a little).
Thorsten> So… to each their own. I’d make a case for non-debhelper
Thorsten> to be allowed, but I know that’s not majority-capable… but
Thorsten> if people wish to use debhelper, dh7, or even *shudder*
Thorsten> dbs or cdbs, fine. Remember people make this often in
Thorsten> their spare time and aren’t getting paid for it so please
Thorsten> keep the fun factor.
The fun factor is important.
My reading of the community consensus is that the points you bring up
have been consider by the community.
You did not bring up new issues.
my reading is that the community believes that the fun factor of more
uniformity when dealing with a lot of packages justifies the restriction
of maintainer preference when there's not a sufficient justification for
a tool other than dh.
You're absolutely right that there is a tradeoff here.
And I think that Debian of 10 or 15 years ago would have evaluated the
tradeoff between the needs of a single maintainer and the needs of
people doing work across a lot of packages differently.
--Sam
