On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 11:58:09PM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote: > metaconfig is meant to be run according to this recipe: > > http://perl5.git.perl.org/metaconfig.git/blob/HEAD:/README > > it won't be a perfect match, as manual patching of the file is > allowed (see the comments) and indeed we patch Configure in the > Debian package.
Yes, I figured that there is a metaconfig.git that is used to generate Configure. I observed that it is not included in the Debian archive or only in a very diverged form. So from a Debian archive point of view the source is not available. This is very similar to how we currently handle compressed javascript. Many javascript libraries are distributed under a BSD-ish license. The compressed javascript files most often include a reference for obtaining the source. Still it is generally not acceptable to not include their exact source in the source package. Even though we can and do patch Configure, for the modifications I would like to apply privately, it is not the preferred form for modification, because I would have to edit very many places that collapse to fewer places in metaconfig. > We could certainly document this better (in README.source) but I am > not convinced that this deserves RC severity. It's you who makes the call about what is RC in perl , but I still think that it should be RC as long as the perl source package does not contain the corresponding metaconfig source (even if it is not used during build). That can be as easy as adding a .orig-metaconfig.tar.bz2 to the source package. I argue that documenting how to regenerate Configure is not enough. The documentation is already there (albeit a bit non-obvious). What is missing is the source. Helmut -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org