On 2025-02-17 08:25:03 +0800 (+0800), Sean Whitton wrote: > On Sun 16 Feb 2025 at 06:18am -06, rhys wrote: > > > The potential for additional function is not relevant. > > > > If the upstream intends to distribute it with a tarball, that's > > the "golden" package that downstream should base code upon. > > The Debian project officially disagrees with you. > > The preferred form for modification, which is what NEW cares about, is > determined by upstream's actual practices, not by their fiat. > > We frequently reject packages from NEW because we have minified files; > we add the source to debian/missing-sources/.
Unfortunately Debian is also very conflicted on this point. Debian has, for legal and logistical reasons, decided that it cannot distribute upstream Git repositories as its source packages, and instead chooses to try to condense upstream's preferred form for modification (back) into source tarballs. In some cases, this condensing loses data that upstream considers important, even at times things referred to in copyright licenses. The irony here is that some of those upstreams do publish source tarballs where that data is extracted from their Git repositories so it can be included correctly, but package maintainers need to be careful to run the same source tarball build process for the basis of the Debian source package in those cases and not just pretend that the _files_ tracked in Git are the same as upstream's preferred form for modification. -- Jeremy Stanley
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