On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 08:26:10PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote: > Wouter Verhelst wrote: > >>Given the recent thread in debian-devel[1], I think we should document in > >>policy that packages that are not tightly related to Debian shouldn't be > >>native. > > > >*sigh* > > > >So I spent a whole subthread trying to explain that I think this is > >*not* true, and seemed to get consensus on that, and now you want to get > >this into policy? > > Consensus is a big word, you managed to get people agree that if > maintainers really considered all the downsides even our complaints > from time to time that it would be acceptable...
Why, yes, indeed, that's what I'm saying: that there seemed to be consensus on the fact that it is acceptable if people do indeed consider the downsides; that the "shouldn't be native" statement is wrong. > >Gee. > > > >Whether or not a native package makes sense should be the maintainer's > >prerogative, not decided by policy. As I said in the thread on -devel, > >there can be good reasons for making a package native. E.g., the > >maintainer doesn't have to deal with two releases (one upstream and one > >for debian) for every code change, but can just do one; there is > >immediate use of a translation team; releases are at least tested on > >Debian's architectures when they are released; etc. > > When using a non-native package, the maintainer does not have to do > any separate release as the upstream tarball is in orig.tar.gz True. However, there will be no significant difference between making the package native or not in that case, IMHO. > The translation team focuses on native packages (next to other > Debian specific translation), because it does not have the resources > to do all of it and native packages are considered Debian > specific... so this is actually in some kind abusing the translation > team if the package does not have to be native. Hmm. It could be seen that way, I guess. > >There are also obvious downsides to doing so, and it's probably a good > >idea to document these somewhere (though I doubt policy is the place for > >that; this is more something for the devref). However, outright claiming > >that it should not be done, will a) make a bunch of packages > >insta-buggy (which is bad, as far as policy is concerned), and b) is not > >the right thing to do, IMO. > > They are already buggy IMHO. Perhaps, but that does not mean that they in fact are. It has been okay for quite a while to do this, and several packages are in fact doing so; changing policy does make them insta-buggy. What I'd like to see before I would support this proposal (or anything like it), is how exactly the practice of releasing non-Debian-specific software as native packages is causing harm to either Debian, or the greater free software community as a whole; since I don't think it does, and I don't think we should forbid a practice which may make a maintainer's workflow easier if it is indeed harmless. In other words: what kind of problems do you think this will cause that have an effect on anyone *but* the maintainer? As said, I agree that documenting the problems with maintaining a package natively is a good thing to do, so that anyone thinking about going down that road can make an informed decision; but that is a far cry from what's being proposed here. Sure, if something is released as a native package, that does mean that people repackaging the software for other distributions may want to skip a few releases now and then -- but I do not see how that is any different from, say, the vim release model, where packagers may want to collect a few patches before uploading a new package, rather than uploading a new package every time Bram releases a patch (which happens about every other day or some such, AIUI). Sure, maintaining software as a native package does introduce the requirement that the other-distribution-packagers know what they're doing, and that they keep up with development with the Debian developer who maintains the package; but then I would hope they would be doing that anyhow. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
