Le Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 05:02:13PM +0200, Thibaut Paumard a écrit : > Le 19/04/12 16:20, Charles Plessy a écrit : > > > > I think that there is a consensus that generated files must be regenerable, > > and > > that it is a bug if their build system is broken. The best way to ensure > > this > > is to regenerate them at build time, however it is not a requirement. In > > particular, I do not see advantages in distributing rebuilds that would for > > instance only update time stamps. It is increasing debdiffs and heating the > > planet for no benefit. > > File timestamps won't show up in debdiff. At the very least, the > maintainer should (IMNSHO) regenerate the files himself and check that > they match what ends-up being distributed. And he should also document > this process in debian/README.source. Honestly, I think it's simpler and > less error-prone to just distribute the regenerated files. But as you > said, it's not a policy requirement.
There are other timestamps. Some documents contain the date where they were built, as an indication for the last time they were modified. For the packages I maintain, where I wrote manpages in DocBook XML, I do not regenerate them at each build and store the generated nroff code in the VCS where the package is maintained. This has the additional advantage that the package does not need to build-depend on the DocBook toolchain. debian/rules contains a target to rebuild, plus a comment explaining which packages to install. The point I am trying to make is that there is no single rule that has to be strictly followed by eveybody in all cases. Otherwise we would fall in the same selective blindess as for the freeness of pictures, videos, music and scientific data. Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Debian Med packaging team, http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120420001744.ga13...@falafel.plessy.net
