Hi Adrian,
Am Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 11:42:42PM +0200 schrieb Adrian Bunk:
> On Sun, Mar 06, 2022 at 09:25:45PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > I think that we should reduce the number of packages using the 1.0 format,
> > as
> > (1) format 3.0 has many advantages, as documented in
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Projects/DebSrc3.0 ; (2) this contributes to
> > standardization of packaging practices, lowering the bar for contributors to
> > contribute to those packages.
> >...
>
> You are not making a compelling case that these benefits clearly
> outweight the substantial costs.
I inspected / fixed four packages where I might be slightly interested.
I agree that the benefits of only moving from source format 1.0 to 3.0
(quilt) might be limited. However, those packages usually had other
issues (bugs, lagging behind upstream, missing watch files, etc.) which
were worth fixing. So raising some awareness about packages that are
potentially not in good shape makes sense, IMHO.
> Such a MBF also:
> (1) causes a lot of extra work, and
> (2) causes a lot of breakage because such larger packaging changes
> are rarely done as careful as would be necessary
>
> When people are making invasive packaging changes like a dh compat bump
> or change the packaging due to such a MBF we often end up with bug
> reports like #1000229 where something broke due to that (empty binary
> packages are among the more typical breakages).
Running debdiff after switching to dh / bumping compat should definitely
be part of the procedure and should at least avoid this kind of bugs.
> Unless a compelling case is made that the benefits of a MBF clearly
> outweight these drawbacks, such MBFs usually have a negative benefit.
Well, filing a bug is one thing. Discussing inside the bug report why
changes are not wanted (may be even by tagging the bug wontfix) is
another thing. Than we at least have some documentation about the
issue. From my experience with the packages I've touched the only
reason for source format 1.0 was that these are not actively maintained.
Fixing the (not yet reported issue) was not a big deal (in contrast to
other changes I considered in the interest of our users).
> lintian already warns or has info tags that should be upgraded to warning,
I absolutely agree here.
> and then there will be slow migrations usually happening when someone
> anyway does (and tests!) larger packaging changes.
This "someone anyway does larger packaging changes" did not seem very
probable for the packages I've touched (see my other mail in this
thread).
> Ensuring that all relevant lintian tags are warnings would be the
> appropriate action (which is not yet true[1]), but there is no urgency
> on getting everything "fixed" immediately.
I agree that there is no real urgency for immediate action - but this
seemed to be the case for other bugs on the packages I've touched the
case as well.
Kind regards
Andreas.
> [1] https://lintian.debian.org/tags/older-source-format
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