Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Hi! On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 09:25:38 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Now all I need is for dpkg to accept that the absence of debian/source/format is declarative of source format 1.0. That's the case _for now_. packages don't need to be changed merely to state the obvious. They need because the dpkg maintainers have decided that it might not be the case indefinitely. Few things first. I don't think we should “ever” remove extraction support for older formats (be it source or binary), we should be able to easily analyze older content. We might want to remove creation support for older formats at some point in the *distant* future, though. And I don't really see any problem with that, we routinely remove support for deprecated stuff all over the place in Debian, given proper transition periods. I understand Raphaël's eagerness to see a fast switch, given his investment on the new formats, and as I obviously consider them a big improvement too. But I don't think it's appropriate to rush it, when we are just at the beginning of being able to use newer source formats, when there's still things being polished on them, for easier use, for different workflows, etc; when higher level tools support is still immature. It has neither seemed appropriate some of the excessively combative, aggressive and personal comments recently seen, when I think there's been will to accommodate for changes to the formats and tools. So, even if the uptake seems pretty fast, I agree it's still too soon to even show warnings. Once (and if) the archive has switched a big proportion, then we can start warning that the format needs to be explicit (lintian mostly, dpkg-source's current warning is not really visible anyway so I think it's fine to leave it there). And only when a tiny fraction is still using 1.0, and only then, we can _consider_, after appropriate debate, a possible plan for a removal of source format 1.0 creation. regards, guillem -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100519062140.ga19...@gaara.hadrons.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 09:01:31AM -0400, James Vega wrote: On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 08:47:28PM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote: Hi, On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:18:30AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Niels Thykier wrote: That being said, I would (as it is now) actually prefer that it was just a helper tool that from a VCS could derive a source package of existing format. That would probably also increase the adoption rate, since existing tools would work with those formats. The (theoretical) format that I gave as example was precisely this: it generates a 3.0 (quilt) source package using a VCS repository as input. I guess what we should have is additional line in it or additional file to record vcs used for packaging which will not interface with the basic operation of other tools. You mean Vcs-* in debian/control? I thought Raphael's idea on the (theoretical) format was a bit more than recording VCS repository site but how VCS is used as imput to the packaging. In any case, I am for not-adding too-much-complication if we can live without them. Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100401163822.gb11...@osamu.debian.net
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Sven Mueller wrote: Julien BLACHE schrieb: Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: I expect this to be of particular interest when we'll have VCS-powered source formats (say 3.0 (git2quilt)) that generate source packages that are plain 3.0 (quilt) based on the git repository information. This is becoming crazy, really. I agree. dpkg-dev should not be depending on any VCS and it should not promote any particular VCS either. I know that git is the new black (oh, wait, that was something else), but I personally don't like it. And I especially dislike how so many git lovers are trying to push it onto others, while there are perfectly good reason (not applicable to all teams or projects of course) not to use git but some other VCS (be it distributed or not. It was an example. I have never said that dpkg-dev would support only one VCS. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100331061841.gf...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
James Westby jw+deb...@jameswestby.net writes: The unpacked source package has no format, it's a directory on disk with certain properties. You could take that directory and produce a source package in any number of formats. The debian/source/format is then not a declaration of what format the directory is in, but what format the tools should produce when creating a source package from it. Thank you, that's a useful distinction. I'll consider it and see if I need to ask more questions, rather than making more noise in this discussion. -- \ “We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, | `\disgraces anyone who would claim it.” —Sam Harris, _The End of | _o__) Faith_, 2004 | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r5n1m2rm@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Le mercredi 31 mars 2010 à 08:18 +0200, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : I agree. dpkg-dev should not be depending on any VCS and it should not promote any particular VCS either. I know that git is the new black (oh, wait, that was something else), but I personally don't like it. And I especially dislike how so many git lovers are trying to push it onto others, while there are perfectly good reason (not applicable to all teams or projects of course) not to use git but some other VCS (be it distributed or not. It was an example. I have never said that dpkg-dev would support only one VCS. Supporting several ones would be even worse. What’s the point in standardizing over a common and flexible package format if it cannot be used with all other tools? -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' “If you behave this way because you are blackmailed by someone, `-[…] I will see what I can do for you.” -- Jörg Schilling signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Josselin Mouette wrote: Le mercredi 31 mars 2010 à 08:18 +0200, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : I agree. dpkg-dev should not be depending on any VCS and it should not promote any particular VCS either. I know that git is the new black (oh, wait, that was something else), but I personally don't like it. And I especially dislike how so many git lovers are trying to push it onto others, while there are perfectly good reason (not applicable to all teams or projects of course) not to use git but some other VCS (be it distributed or not. It was an example. I have never said that dpkg-dev would support only one VCS. Supporting several ones would be even worse. What’s the point in standardizing over a common and flexible package format if it cannot be used with all other tools? Hi I do admit I have not completely figured out how it would work and how it would help us. However, this is exactly why I am not ready to discard the idea yet. That being said, I would (as it is now) actually prefer that it was just a helper tool that from a VCS could derive a source package of existing format. That would probably also increase the adoption rate, since existing tools would work with those formats. ~Niels I reserve the right to change my opinion on this if the implementation of the VCS-based source format is awesome enough. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Niels Thykier wrote: That being said, I would (as it is now) actually prefer that it was just a helper tool that from a VCS could derive a source package of existing format. That would probably also increase the adoption rate, since existing tools would work with those formats. The (theoretical) format that I gave as example was precisely this: it generates a 3.0 (quilt) source package using a VCS repository as input. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100331091830.gb1...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Hi, On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:18:30AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Niels Thykier wrote: That being said, I would (as it is now) actually prefer that it was just a helper tool that from a VCS could derive a source package of existing format. That would probably also increase the adoption rate, since existing tools would work with those formats. The (theoretical) format that I gave as example was precisely this: it generates a 3.0 (quilt) source package using a VCS repository as input. I guess what we should have is additional line in it or additional file to record vcs used for packaging which will not interface with the basic operation of other tools. We have now (as I know from typical packages.): debian/source/format debian/source/lintian-override what's wrong with having another. Some tool may use it ... some can just ignore... Anyway, with 3.0 format, we are moving away from diff format to allow binary image without awkward hack. This is good. We now have packaging data stored in separated and standardized for easy inspection with intuitive structure. These are the plus for everyone who have extra time to update package. (We should not force such update because we are Debian ...) Osamu PS: Making distribution wise change for consistency has been challenge for Debian. We have been slow. That is good in some way... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100331114728.ga4...@osamu.debian.net
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 08:47:28PM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote: Hi, On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:18:30AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Niels Thykier wrote: That being said, I would (as it is now) actually prefer that it was just a helper tool that from a VCS could derive a source package of existing format. That would probably also increase the adoption rate, since existing tools would work with those formats. The (theoretical) format that I gave as example was precisely this: it generates a 3.0 (quilt) source package using a VCS repository as input. I guess what we should have is additional line in it or additional file to record vcs used for packaging which will not interface with the basic operation of other tools. You mean Vcs-* in debian/control? -- James GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega james...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 02:03:09PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: [...] In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt) and you're done. Aside from all the packaging tools that aren't quite there yet with 3.0 support, 3.0 packages break two cheap generic tools that I used to be able to use to inspect source packages: zless, and interdiff. While this loss doesn't outweigh the benefits, this is certainly not win-win, and I would appreciate it if you would try to be more understanding of developers' natural resistance to this change. Hi I recently created a script to diff two 3.0 source packages, which I am submitting to devscripts (see #575395). It is also able to diff 1.0 vs 3.0 (quilt) by converting the latter to an 1.0 like format and interdiff'ing them for you. If you are interested in it, you can prefetch it from [1]; I certainly could use some feedback on it. I will also be looking into providing a way to easily review a single 3.0 package (which would be #575394); suggestions are also welcome for that. ~Niels [1] Script: http://www.student.dtu.dk/~s072425/debian/qdebdiff Doc: http://www.student.dtu.dk/~s072425/debian/qdebdiff.html signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On 30 March 2010 16:46, Sven Mueller deb...@incase.de wrote: My main reason for not yet switching is that hg-buildpackage and svn-buildpackage don't completely support the 3.0 format yet as far as I can tell. You can try out mercurial-buildpackage, where I have tried to support 3.0 (quilt) as good as I could: the default branch contains the fully patched source code as well as the explicit debian/patches. That way you can just hack away anywhere in your package and repeatedly run mercurial-buildpackage until you are satisfied, and then finally rename the dpkg-source autogenerated patch to something meaningful. But I would like to hear suggestions for improvements... Ohh, and thanks to Raphael Hertzog for doing all the hard work on the new formats! Cheers, -- Jens Peter Secher. _DD6A 05B0 174E BFB2 D4D9 B52E 0EE5 978A FE63 E8A1 jpsecher gmail com_. A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion. Q. Why is top posting bad? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/x2wc4f47b5b1003311704w73e6efafha33f5ecfd4d88...@mail.gmail.com
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Ben Finney schrieb: Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: There's a default value currently and it's 1.0, and I want to remove the existence of a default value in the long term because it does not make sense to have a default value corresponding to a source format that is no longer recommended. That's the part I don't see a reason for. Any future formats will be unambiguously distinguishable. Those format-undeclared source packages can't be eradicated from the earth entirely. So why not simply declare that they are source format 1.0, as is without changes, and will always be recognised as such even *after* that format is utterly deprecated? What you describe is actually really a default to 1.0 behaviour. And though I dislike the way lintian warned about a missing debian/source/format file, I understand quite well why the dpkg maintainer would like to remove that default: 1.0 in ambiguous in many ways (for example in changing silently to native package format if the orig.tar.gz is missing).. I'm not going to convert my few packages to a 3.0 format any time soon if it doesn't prove to be beneficial for me, but I will add an explicit 1.0 format specification to those packages I upload in the meantime. My main reason for not yet switching is that hg-buildpackage and svn-buildpackage don't completely support the 3.0 format yet as far as I can tell. Anyhow, I would really welcome if dpkg-source would support some additional values in debian/source/format: 1.0 (native) 1.0 (non-native) default (native) default (non-native) Which would allow me to explicitly follow the current recommendation of the dpkg maintainers (last two) or explicitly state that my package is format 1.0 of either flavour. Regards, Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bb20ec7.9090...@incase.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Julien BLACHE schrieb: Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: I expect this to be of particular interest when we'll have VCS-powered source formats (say 3.0 (git2quilt)) that generate source packages that are plain 3.0 (quilt) based on the git repository information. This is becoming crazy, really. I agree. dpkg-dev should not be depending on any VCS and it should not promote any particular VCS either. I know that git is the new black (oh, wait, that was something else), but I personally don't like it. And I especially dislike how so many git lovers are trying to push it onto others, while there are perfectly good reason (not applicable to all teams or projects of course) not to use git but some other VCS (be it distributed or not. Regards, Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bb21032.6050...@incase.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Sven Mueller wrote: (for example in changing silently to native package format if the orig.tar.gz is missing) That's not true is it? At least, if I use 'debuild' I get a pretty big warning if the orig.tar.gz is missing. snip $ apt-get source acct $ rm acct_6.5.1.orig.tar.gz $ debuild This package has a Debian revision number but there does not seem to be an appropriate original tar file or .orig directory in the parent directory; (expected one of acct_6.5.1.orig.tar.gz, acct_6.5.1.orig.tar.bz2, acct_6.5.1.orig.tar.lzma or acct-6.5.1.orig) /snip If that is debuild specific, wouldn't it be much simpler to implement the same check in dpkg-dev than having every package add this silly format file? I for one am very happy I won't be seeing the Lintian warning anymore and have no intention of adding the source/format file until forced to for my (very few) packages. IMO format 1.0 is perfectly adequate for tons of packages and should remain the default without any need to be specified. Cheers, FJP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201003301804.07574.elen...@planet.nl
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Sven Mueller deb...@incase.de writes: Ben Finney schrieb: Any future formats will be unambiguously distinguishable. Those format-undeclared source packages can't be eradicated from the earth entirely. So why not simply declare that they are source format 1.0, as is without changes, and will always be recognised as such even *after* that format is utterly deprecated? What you describe is actually really a default to 1.0 behaviour. Specifically, a behaviour of *recognising* that a package is in source format 1.0. That's a fact of that package in that state, that shouldn't change just because time has passed. In other words, a source package left as it was from five years ago (i.e., with no source format declaration) is still source format 1.0 five years ago, today, in ten years, and in a hundred years; because the passage of time doesn't change the format that the source package is in. [source format 1.0 is] ambiguous in many ways (for example in changing silently to native package format if the orig.tar.gz is missing).. Maybe so. I don't see how that is improved by pretending that a package which is in source format 1.0 is instead in a different format. Calling it a different format from 1.0 would be false. The dpkg tool needs to recognise the format for what it is, and respond however the dpkg maintainers feel is appropriate in the presence of that format. Now, *in response to* recognising that fact (“the package is in source format 1.0”), the behaviour of the tool can and should change over time; I have no argument against that behaviour gradually getting more hostile to that format over time. The only thing I'm arguing for in this case is that such packages are, in fact, in source package format 1.0, that fact doesn't change over time, and in the absence of any declarative change to the package they should not be falsely identified as any other format. Again, I say all this only to correct misinterpretation, just as I hope to be corrected if I have misinterpreted the situation. Thanks. -- \ “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of | `\ the demand.” —Josh Billings | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87vdcdmg82@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:29:01 +1100, Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote: Specifically, a behaviour of *recognising* that a package is in source format 1.0. That's a fact of that package in that state, that shouldn't change just because time has passed. In other words, a source package left as it was from five years ago (i.e., with no source format declaration) is still source format 1.0 five years ago, today, in ten years, and in a hundred years; because the passage of time doesn't change the format that the source package is in. Yes, the source package, being the .dsc and associated components is still in source format 1.0. It also states that it is, with Format: 1.0 in said .dsc file. The unpacked source package has no format, it's a directory on disk with certain properties. You could take that directory and produce a source package in any number of formats. The debian/source/format is then not a declaration of what format the directory is in, but what format the tools should produce when creating a source package from it. What we are talking about is what the maintainer of the package wants to happen when they produce the source package. Anything that actually cares that if it unpacks and rebuilds a source package it will use the same format can just request the same format as the source package declares in the .dsc. If the maintainer wishes to stick on 1.0 in 10 years time when the project has moved on then why shouldn't they have to request that somehow? Thanks, James -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ljd9jm84@jameswestby.net
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 09:02:24AM +0200, Christian PERRIER wrote: I'm surprised by the resistance I see to these changes. I see the approach pushed by dpkg maintainers as fairly conservative with very progressive changes to existing packages and much respect for people who don't want to adopt the new source format. The currently debated change is to kindly suggest to maintainers who prefer sticking with 1.0 source format to mention this explicitely in their source tree. I really fail to see what is the burden in this. Part of the issue here is that this was a default enabled lintian warning (it's not any more, but it was). Since a lot of people like to keep their packages lintian clean this comes over as somewhat more urgent than what you're suggesting above. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100329094514.ga13...@sirena.org.uk
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote: Hi, The problem is that if debian/source/format is missing for one reason or another, your package will be silently built as a 1.0 source package. There's no need for it to be silent. The idea was raised that, after a period of silent deprecation, the recognition of source format 1.0 could cause a warning. It's a well-known fact that every DD out there thoroughly reviews her package's build log before uploading. Oh, wait, no, it isn't, quite the contrary, actually. The only point I've been trying to understand is, regardless of how format 1.0 packages are handled once recognised, why the current undeclared format 1.0 packages can't be recognised as such indefinitely without any change in those packages. Because there's no way to tell if it's an old 1.0 package or a 3.0 or later package missing debian/source for whatever reason. FWIW I think debian/source/format sucks big time and its content should be moved to debian/control. JB. -- Julien BLACHE - Debian GNU/Linux Developer - jbla...@debian.org Public key available on http://www.jblache.org - KeyID: F5D6 5169 GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87iq8f77pq@sonic.technologeek.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Mon, 29 Mar 2010, Julien BLACHE wrote: FWIW I think debian/source/format sucks big time and its content should be moved to debian/control. Actually it's a design decision to put it outside of the control file: it's easier to create/modify/discard automatically when needed. I expect this to be of particular interest when we'll have VCS-powered source formats (say 3.0 (git2quilt)) that generate source packages that are plain 3.0 (quilt) based on the git repository information. For example, when importing historical version of the source package, you might want to be able to discard/overwrite the source format information. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100329105133.gd8...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: I expect this to be of particular interest when we'll have VCS-powered source formats (say 3.0 (git2quilt)) that generate source packages that are plain 3.0 (quilt) based on the git repository information. This is becoming crazy, really. JB. -- Julien BLACHE - Debian GNU/Linux Developer - jbla...@debian.org Public key available on http://www.jblache.org - KeyID: F5D6 5169 GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87eij3754s@sonic.technologeek.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Wouter Verhelst schrieb: I might want to have a file with 1.0 (non-native) to have dpkg error out when I accidentally don't have a .orig.tar.gz file somewhere, for instance. As long as the absense of that file does not make things suddenly break, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I wholeheartedly agree here. Of course, this all conveniently ignores the fact that the above explicit non-native option isn't actually supported, which is unfortunate... Didn't check for this: Is a bug open to request such a feature to explicitly say 1.0 (native) or 1.0 (non-native)? I would also find this option really useful [...] I did say until dpkg is fixed. I think the fix in dpkg needs to be that the lack of debian/source/format uniquely identifies source format 1.0 Unfortunately, source format 1.0 actually encompasses *two* formats: native packages and non-native packages. I'm sure you've also incorrectly gotten native source packages on occasion when what you wanted was a non-native package. Oh yes, unfortunately, I even once accidentally uploaded such a package while doing a sponsored upload (did a rebuild but somehow managed to not have the orig.tar.gz at the right place). Oh the shame ;-) Regards, Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bb0fea7.5030...@debian.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Sven Mueller s...@debian.org writes: Wouter Verhelst schrieb: Of course, this all conveniently ignores the fact that the above explicit non-native option isn't actually supported, which is unfortunate... Didn't check for this: Is a bug open to request such a feature to explicitly say 1.0 (native) or 1.0 (non-native)? I would also find this option really useful There's really no meaningful difference between a hypothetical 1.0 (native) and the already-implemented 3.0 (native), so you can just use 3.0 (native) for that. That doesn't solve the 1.0 (non-native) request, though, and I suspect that's the more common case. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/874ojygazp@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Quoting Steve Langasek (vor...@debian.org): (following up on Steve's mail but that's more a summary of my own feelings about this topic) Fundamentally, I don't think that's a responsible decision for the dpkg maintainers to make. You're making busywork for maintainers, and conflict for yourself, by insisting on this when there's no technical reason it should be the case. If what you care about is the format used by *new* packages, I think you should focus on making sure the templates maintainers are using (such as dh-make) set the desired default explicitly. That would have an *immediate* payoff, unlike trying to change the implicit default, which involves a lot of work for a very small payoff in the distant future (i.e.: make all the developers manually add this file now so that, at some point when all packages have the file, the default can be changed and a different set of packages can remove the file again). I'm surprised by the resistance I see to these changes. I see the approach pushed by dpkg maintainers as fairly conservative with very progressive changes to existing packages and much respect for people who don't want to adopt the new source format. The currently debated change is to kindly suggest to maintainers who prefer sticking with 1.0 source format to mention this explicitely in their source tree. I really fail to see what is the burden in this. I very much doubt that dpkg maintainers want maintainers do a new upload of their packages *just for this*. The point of this discusion was, IIRC, to find the most appropriate way to add something to lintian as a reminder to people that explicitely mentioning that the package's source format is 1.0 could be a good idea. What seems to have converged as of now (Russ' last proposal) seems to be a good compromise. As a frequent NMUer, I've decided to add that debian/source/format to packages I'm NMUing. I don't see any rational argument to oppose this. Of course, I will *not* switch packages to source v3 in NMUs. Just explicitely mention that package foo is using v1.0. The next debate to have will come when it's time to change the default behaviour of dpkg-source. That debate has been mixed into the current discussion and is probably what makes it quite hairy It is very obviously controversial to decide when to change the default behaviour of such a key tool and I think that dpkg maintainers are probably slightly wrong to say that *they* will change the default at some moment in the future. Such decision probably belongs to a wider audience than dpkg maintainers (no matter how wise they are) and I think it would make a perfect topic for the CTTE (after all, you guys have nothing to do..:-))of course with the dpkg maintainers (who are those doing the hard work). But, definitely IMHO, having as many packages as possible to carry an explicit information about the source format they want to use will be a great help in such a decision. An, unless I'v emisunderstood the current discussion, I don't really see any problem in this. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Sat, 27 Mar 2010, Steve Langasek wrote: make all the developers manually add this file now so that, at some point when all packages have the file, the default can be changed and a different set of packages can remove the file again. During the discussion in this thread I realized that changing the default was not really what I was looking for because there's no longer any default format that is acceptable to use in all cases. Instead what I want is to remove the default altogether so that 1.0 is no longer implicitly blessed/recommended. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100328075209.gd14...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: Instead what I want is to remove the default altogether so that 1.0 is no longer implicitly blessed/recommended. As far as I can understand, this is entirely compatible with “absence of ‘debian/source/format’ always means the package is in “1.0” source format” since that has no implication that “1.0” is blessed or recommended in any way. To that extent, I welcome this policy. -- \ “To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, | `\and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.” | _o__)—Bertrand Russell | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87tys0oohe@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
]] Christian Perrier [...] | The next debate to have will come when it's time to change the default | behaviour of dpkg-source. That debate has been mixed into the current | discussion and is probably what makes it quite hairy It is very | obviously controversial to decide when to change the default behaviour | of such a key tool and I think that dpkg maintainers are probably | slightly wrong to say that *they* will change the default at some | moment in the future. Given that what we are talking about is switching from «1.0 is implicit» to «version is explicit», I don't think it makes much sense to ever switch the default version for dpkg-source. However, making it warn and then eventually fail if you don't declare which version your package is is something I think makes sense. -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r5n4hlul@qurzaw.linpro.no
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Ben Finney wrote: Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: Instead what I want is to remove the default altogether so that 1.0 is no longer implicitly blessed/recommended. As far as I can understand, this is entirely compatible with “absence of ‘debian/source/format’ always means the package is in “1.0” source format” since that has no implication that “1.0” is blessed or recommended in any way. To that extent, I welcome this policy. Please stop misinterpreting what I say. There's a default value currently and it's 1.0, and I want to remove the existence of a default value in the long term because it does not make sense to have a default value corresponding to a source format that is no longer recommended. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100328085138.gg14...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote: Hi, As far as I can understand, this is entirely compatible with “absence of ‘debian/source/format’ always means the package is in “1.0” source The problem is that if debian/source/format is missing for one reason or another, your package will be silently built as a 1.0 source package. From there on, in the best case it fails right away but it can also lead to silently building packages without applying patches. Now, let's say there's a security patch in the pile, and this becomes a problem. JB. -- Julien BLACHE - Debian GNU/Linux Developer - jbla...@debian.org Public key available on http://www.jblache.org - KeyID: F5D6 5169 GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87zl1spzmf@sonic.technologeek.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
#include hallo.h * Raphael Hertzog [Sun, Mar 28 2010, 10:51:38AM]: As far as I can understand, this is entirely compatible with “absence of ‘debian/source/format’ always means the package is in “1.0” source format” since that has no implication that “1.0” is blessed or recommended in any way. To that extent, I welcome this policy. Please stop misinterpreting what I say. There's a default value currently and it's 1.0, and I want to remove the existence of a default value in the long term because it does not make sense to have a default value corresponding to a source format that is no longer recommended. I, for one, consider abusing Lintian checks for recommendations a very bad idea. Especially if you use _warnings_ for that. To warn about what? Something that just works without needing any change? Very funny. If you really want to _recommend_ something then please add a few lines to dpkg-dev or debhelper tools output. And they should only appear when changing the format might be beneficial, i.e. when the .../format file is missing but debian/patches is present. Or if the debian/watch file refers to .bz2. Such usecase based advertising would be much more effective and more nice to live with. Regards, Eduard. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100328095247.ga4...@rotes76.wohnheim.uni-kl.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Eduard Bloch wrote: I, for one, consider abusing Lintian checks for recommendations a very bad idea. Especially if you use _warnings_ for that. To warn about what? To warn about future failures once dpkg-source fails when there's no debian/source/format. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100328102018.gm14...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, Ben Finney wrote: As far as I can understand, this is entirely compatible with “absence of ‘debian/source/format’ always means the package is in “1.0” source format” since that has no implication that “1.0” is blessed or recommended in any way. To that extent, I welcome this policy. Please stop misinterpreting what I say. That's what I'm trying to do, by showing my current interpretation so it can be corrected if necessary. I've found it rather difficult to follow your reasoning on this, so I'm glad for this discussion where, in response to questions and attempts at paraphrasing, you've explained more detail about what it is you're trying to achieve with these changes. Thank you! There's a default value currently and it's 1.0, and I want to remove the existence of a default value in the long term because it does not make sense to have a default value corresponding to a source format that is no longer recommended. That's the part I don't see a reason for. Any future formats will be unambiguously distinguishable. Those format-undeclared source packages can't be eradicated from the earth entirely. So why not simply declare that they are source format 1.0, as is without changes, and will always be recognised as such even *after* that format is utterly deprecated? -- \ “To have the choice between proprietary software packages, is | `\ being able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a | _o__)master.” —Richard M. Stallman, 2007-05-16 | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87pr2onmc3@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Julien BLACHE jbla...@debian.org writes: The problem is that if debian/source/format is missing for one reason or another, your package will be silently built as a 1.0 source package. There's no need for it to be silent. The idea was raised that, after a period of silent deprecation, the recognition of source format 1.0 could cause a warning. The only point I've been trying to understand is, regardless of how format 1.0 packages are handled once recognised, why the current undeclared format 1.0 packages can't be recognised as such indefinitely without any change in those packages. -- \ “We jealously reserve the right to be mistaken in our view of | `\ what exists, given that theories often change under pressure | _o__) from further investigation.” —Thomas W. Clark, 2009 | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ljdcnm56@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 09:28:58PM +, Neil Williams wrote: Again from Wouter's comments: It is of course perfectly fine for dpkg-source to error out if it detects that things are not completely in order, or if it detects that features were requested that are not supported with the source format that is in use. But it should not silently assume another format is probably to be used if things are not entirely what they should have been. The absence of debian/source/format means 1.0 and dpkg should not assert anything else or behave as if it really is 3.0 or something else. No file means format 1.0 and format 1.0 means never having the file. That's the simplicity that I like. Since I'm being quoted here, I think it's only fair if I'm allowed to correct you when we seem to disagree :-) Absense of the file should indeed imply that 1.0 is used. However, existence of the file should not imply that 1.0 cannot be used. I might want to have a file with 1.0 (non-native) to have dpkg error out when I accidentally don't have a .orig.tar.gz file somewhere, for instance. As long as the absense of that file does not make things suddenly break, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. [...] What is the problem with format 1.0 packages not having debian/source/format ? I consider it a bug that dpkg uses heuristics to detect the source format that is currently in use. In the interest of backwards compatibility, these heuristics should not be removed. However, adding a way for me to make explicit to dpkg what the current format is is a Good Thing, provided it does not suddenly become mandatory. Of course, this all conveniently ignores the fact that the above explicit non-native option isn't actually supported, which is unfortunate... [...] I did say until dpkg is fixed. I think the fix in dpkg needs to be that the lack of debian/source/format uniquely identifies source format 1.0 Unfortunately, source format 1.0 actually encompasses *two* formats: native packages and non-native packages. I'm sure you've also incorrectly gotten native source packages on occasion when what you wanted was a non-native package. -- 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 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 09:25:38AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Now all I need is for dpkg to accept that the absence of debian/source/format is declarative of source format 1.0. That's the case _for now_. packages don't need to be changed merely to state the obvious. They need because the dpkg maintainers have decided that it might not be the case indefinitely. Fundamentally, I don't think that's a responsible decision for the dpkg maintainers to make. You're making busywork for maintainers, and conflict for yourself, by insisting on this when there's no technical reason it should be the case. If what you care about is the format used by *new* packages, I think you should focus on making sure the templates maintainers are using (such as dh-make) set the desired default explicitly. That would have an *immediate* payoff, unlike trying to change the implicit default, which involves a lot of work for a very small payoff in the distant future (i.e.: make all the developers manually add this file now so that, at some point when all packages have the file, the default can be changed and a different set of packages can remove the file again). -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: If what you care about is the format used by *new* packages, I think you should focus on making sure the templates maintainers are using (such as dh-make) set the desired default explicitly. That would have an *immediate* payoff... That is already done: $ grep source/format -B2 -A19 /usr/bin/dh_make sub output_source_format { my $outfile = source/format; if ( $main::overlay eq ) { if ( $main::add_missing -f $outfile) { print File $outfile exists, skipping.\n; return; } } open OUT, $outfile or die Unable to open file $outfile for writing: $! \n; if ($debian_native) { print OUT 3.0 (native)\n; } else { print OUT 3.0 (quilt)\n; } close OUT; } -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e13a36b31003272132h4550c42clfa01a88300d4f...@mail.gmail.com
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:30:28 -0700 Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: this at this point. I've changed the severity to wishlist instead, which I think more accurately reflects the current severity of this request. That's fair. N: missing-debian-source-format N: N: To allow for possible future changes in the default source format, N: explicitly selecting a source format by creating debian/source/format N: is recommended. N: N: If you don't have a reason to stay with the old format for this N: package, please consider switching to 3.0 (quilt) (for packages with N: a separate upstream tarball) or to 3.0 (native) (for Debian native N: packages). N: N: If you wish to keep using the old format, please create that file and N: put 1.0 in it to be explicit about the source package version. If N: you have problems with the 3.0 format, the dpkg maintainers are N: interested in hearing, at debian-d...@lists.debian.org, the N: (technical) reasons why the new formats do not suit you N: N: Refer to the dpkg-source(1) manual page and N: http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/DebSrc3.0 for details. N: N: Severity: wishlist, Certainty: certain I hope this is a reasonable compromise between the various stances on the new source format. None of this is set in stone, or has gone anywhere other than the Lintian Git repository, and we can definitely change it further based on additional feedback. Much improved, thank you. Now all I need is for dpkg to accept that the absence of debian/source/format is declarative of source format 1.0 and that packages don't need to be changed merely to state the obvious. -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ pgpEXpGniZJQZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Steve Langasek wrote: If it's really so important to the dpkg maintainers that source format 1.0 is declared, why doesn't dpkg-source -b *generate* this content automatically as part of the .diff.gz so that maintainers aren't being asked to take a manual action to assert the status quo? My goal as dpkg maintainer is that Debian converts the maximum number of source packages to the new source formats in the shortest timeframe. (You might not share this goal but that's another matter) The initial plan to achieve this was to auto-convert the source packages (hence the archive rebuild, the numerous bugs filed, and the release goal). I've been convinced that this was not necessarily the right approach for Debian. But I still want to be able to modify dpkg-source to not build 1.0 by default at some point, because it would be weird to use by default a format that we (dpkg maintainers) would consider as deprecated (granted, it's in the long term). At the same time, I've been convinced to change dpkg-source to only try to use one source format instead of having a fallback list (1.0 has this automatic fallback on native packages and people agreed that we should not continue to follow this bad design). We have an opportunity to fix now because if you indicate 3.0 (quilt) you will never build native package by mistake (and if you indicate 3.0 (native) you won't build a non-native package). Of course dpkg-source could autogenerate debian/source/format to 1, but this would mean taking the decision (“I want to continue using the old format”) in place of the maintainer, and it's a bad idea given my goal, just like it was a bad idea to automatically convert source packages to 3.0 (quilt) without the maintainer explicit consent. Taking all those points into account, this lintian warning is the best approach that I found out that respects all points of views [1] and I believe it respects Debian's philosophy of letting the maintainer in total control of his package. Cheers, [1] My point of view as developer that want to see the new formats widely used and the point of view of the maintainers that want control over his package and a guaranty that it won't break in the future. Cf the explanation of Anthony Towns in http://lists.debian.org/87b3a4191003251152r4367118ej35c16abd7fbbf...@mail.gmail.com I really have the feeling to see this antagonism at play in this thread. -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326081730.gb7...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Now all I need is for dpkg to accept that the absence of debian/source/format is declarative of source format 1.0. That's the case _for now_. packages don't need to be changed merely to state the obvious. They need because the dpkg maintainers have decided that it might not be the case indefinitely. I don't see any significant difference in the wording, the major change is the priority which simply means that less people will see it/take it into account (those that use -I by default). Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326082538.gc7...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog a écrit : Note that the lintian message specifically requests to contact us if you decide to stick with 1.0 for such a technical reason. That's done that way so that I can help resolve those problems. No later than this morning I contacted the launchpad guys to allow new source formats in karmic PPA because one DD continued to use 1.0 for this reason. Did they reply? AFAIC, the same applies to jaunty PPA and lenny-backports. Cheers, -- Stéphane -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bac70ea.6020...@glondu.net
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Stéphane Glondu wrote: Raphael Hertzog a écrit : Note that the lintian message specifically requests to contact us if you decide to stick with 1.0 for such a technical reason. That's done that way so that I can help resolve those problems. No later than this morning I contacted the launchpad guys to allow new source formats in karmic PPA because one DD continued to use 1.0 for this reason. Did they reply? AFAIC, the same applies to jaunty PPA and lenny-backports. Yes, they are going to allow it for karmic PPA. I just asked for jaunty too. lenny-backports needs a dak upgrade and formorer doesn't want to do it, maybe someone else should offer him to manage it for him. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326084407.ge7...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Now all I need is for dpkg to accept that the absence of debian/source/format is declarative of source format 1.0. That's the case _for now_. You seem to imply that the meaning of the above situation is subject to change outside the power of the dpkg maintainers. If so, why would that be? If not, and the definition of those meanings is up to the dpkg maintainers, why would they ever want the above meaning to change? -- \“The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the | `\ hijacking of morality by religion.” —Arthur C. Clarke, 1991 | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8739znpiwd@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:17:30 +0100, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: My goal as dpkg maintainer is that Debian converts the maximum number of source packages to the new source formats in the shortest timeframe. (You might not share this goal but that's another matter) Do you really need a tech ctte decision to step back from that idea at this point of our release process? Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1nv5zg-0007t0...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri Mar 26 10:11, Marc Haber wrote: On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:17:30 +0100, Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: My goal as dpkg maintainer is that Debian converts the maximum number of source packages to the new source formats in the shortest timeframe. (You might not share this goal but that's another matter) Do you really need a tech ctte decision to step back from that idea at this point of our release process? I think that's a little harsh, I think that's a perfectly reasonable view. He didn't say 'ignoring the release' or 'by squeeze'. The expected time using the debhelper approach of 'build it and they will come' might be expected to take 5 years and Raphael is trying to actively work towards it so that it happens in 3. There surely must be some extra effort that people can put in to get their system adopted faster than just putting it out there and see what happens. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 05:19:41PM +0100, Benjamin Drung wrote: Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? There used to be a dak package but it ended up lagging very badly behind the actual dak code because it needed some database schema upgrades as time went on and these are very difficult to manage in a robust fashion in a package. Nobody ever had the time to do the updates and the package was so bitrotted that it was felt safer to remove it rather than mislead people into doing new installations with it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326102549.ga27...@sirena.org.uk
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:13:01AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: The long tag description probably could be improved to make it clearer that the intention isn't to be a cudgel. Unfortunately pretty much any lintian warning ends up being a cudgel if it's enabled by default since zero lintian warnings is such a common goal. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326103221.gb27...@sirena.org.uk
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 05:19:41PM +0100, Benjamin Drung wrote: Am Donnerstag, den 25.03.2010, 16:16 + schrieb Philipp Kern: On 2010-03-25, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: I’d expect it to be much smoother for an organization that uses Debian tools and works with us to add missing functionality in them if needed, than for an organization that uses its own tools. You seriously don't want to force dak upon everyone. And there is not even a package. (And the same is true for wanna-build, sadly.) Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? There is a wanna-build package. It's about a year out of sync with what's in use on the Debian buildds, and would be possible to merge (as was done for sbuild and then buildd). It just needs a large chunk of time to merge and test. I don't have time for it right now myself, so probably won't happen for Squeeze. If anyone is sufficiently motiviated to do this, they are welcome to do this (I'll be happy to review and merge changes as time allows). Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `-GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:32:21 + Mark Brown broo...@sirena.org.uk wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:13:01AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: The long tag description probably could be improved to make it clearer that the intention isn't to be a cudgel. Unfortunately pretty much any lintian warning ends up being a cudgel if it's enabled by default since zero lintian warnings is such a common goal. Russ has suggested the new tag becoming wishlist and once a tag is wishlist, it won't show up for most people - only with lintian -I. ... I've changed the severity to wishlist instead, http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/03/msg00837.html From lintian (1) in sid: The default settings are equivalent to -L =important -L+=normal/possible -L +minor/certain). so Severity: wishlist won't appear unless you override those defaults with -I or other options. -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/ pgpidTrDnq55Q.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On 25/03/2010 20:12, Raphael Hertzog wrote: - I'm still undecided whether I will change the default format in dpkg-source but obviously once all packages provide debian/source/format, I will be able to make the change without much bad impact. What is the use case of a default format if all packages provide debian/source/format ? Can we avoid to put a debian/source/format in our package if we agree to change our format when default in dpkg change ? (we must ensure that our package works with both format in this case) If yes, then what is the meaning of the lintian check ? (if no, then I really would want a use case of the default format) Or can we use 'default' in debian/source/format ? (we would have to distinguish default(native) and default(non-native)...) - the adoption rate of the new format is pretty good but that's also because I promoted it a lot so that maintainers currently have it in their mind when updating their packages. Having lintian remind them for packages where they have not yet decided which format to use is a good thing to keep the steady rate. http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/dpkg-v3/ I better agree on this argument. Regards, Vincent - the message in the lintian warning also asks for feedback because I want to know why people decide to not use the newer formats so that I can try fixing/improving whatever is needed. Cheers, -- Vincent Danjean GPG key ID 0x9D025E87 vdanj...@debian.org GPG key fingerprint: FC95 08A6 854D DB48 4B9A 8A94 0BF7 7867 9D02 5E87 Unofficial packages: http://moais.imag.fr/membres/vincent.danjean/deb.html APT repo: deb http://perso.debian.org/~vdanjean/debian unstable main -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bacaa96.1090...@free.fr
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog schrieb am Friday, den 26. March 2010: On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Stéphane Glondu wrote: Raphael Hertzog a écrit : Note that the lintian message specifically requests to contact us if you decide to stick with 1.0 for such a technical reason. That's done that way so that I can help resolve those problems. No later than this morning I contacted the launchpad guys to allow new source formats in karmic PPA because one DD continued to use 1.0 for this reason. Did they reply? AFAIC, the same applies to jaunty PPA and lenny-backports. Yes, they are going to allow it for karmic PPA. I just asked for jaunty too. lenny-backports needs a dak upgrade and formorer doesn't want to do it, maybe someone else should offer him to manage it for him. Thats not true. What I said to you is that we won't upgrade dak before backports.debian.org as this would mean doubling the work. Alex -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326131539.gi1...@hawking.credativ.lan
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Vincent Danjean wrote: What is the use case of a default format if all packages provide debian/source/format ? The default source format is required for backwards compatibility. I can't simply make the build fail if debian/source/format doesn't exist! But you're right that changing the default format doesn't make much sense when we are in a situation where we have multiple source formats and that there's none that is acceptable to use in all cases. Instead, when we'll deprecate the 1.0 format, we should simply make dpkg-source -b fail if debian/source/format doesn't exist. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100326145253.ge8...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: I don't see any significant difference in the wording, Excellent, then I succeeded. If the people who were upset think it's better and you don't see a difference, that's exactly the balance that I was trying to strike. the major change is the priority which simply means that less people will see it/take it into account (those that use -I by default). Yes, this is always the standard tradeoff. However, that's an overall Lintian design decision: it only shows minor/certain or normal and higher bugs by default, and you have to ask if you want to see uncertain minor or wishlist bugs. That's to encourage people who don't want to be bothered with what they consider trivia to still use Lintian to check for significant issues. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87mxxv6k1f@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
OoO En ce début de soirée du jeudi 25 mars 2010, vers 21:06, Neil Williams codeh...@debian.org disait : Removing the tag without fixing dpkg to not require debian/source/format for source format 1.0 packages. That bug does need to be fixed. I've only altered a few of my packages in SVN - none of those need an upload particularly soon - so if there's a realistic chance that dpkg will never assert format 3.0 in the absence of debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) No offense, but adding a file to override a lintian information about adding a simple file seems a bit odd. -- Don't stop at one bug. - The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan Plauger) pgpzkSjWP595c.pgp Description: PGP signature
About new source formats for packages without patches
Hi, Responding to http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/201-lintian,-source-format-3.0-and-blog-comments.html: 1/ Instead of taking 30 minutes to explain why you don't care of the new formats, it would have been way more useful to apply the patch sitting in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=388567 where multiple people prodded you for an upload. 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Nevertheless, I will do what is necessary to avoid 3.0 until there is a compelling technical reason to adopt it. Why are you actively working against the work of another DD in the project? Shall I do the same when I review your dpkg-dev patches because I don't care of Emdebian? Adding a redundant directory and file is obnoxious. I fail to see why debian/source-format would not have been perfectly suitable. There can be other files in debian/source/ (patch-header, options, lintian-overrides, include-binaries, etc.). Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325114955.ga3...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? Mike 1. I'm not saying it can't have a benefit. Merely that there are plenty of cases where it doesn't. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325115839.ga4...@glandium.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hi, Responding to http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/201-lintian,-source-format-3.0-and-blog-comments.html: Thanks, Raphael, for bringing this to a proper place! 1/ Instead of taking 30 minutes to explain why you don't care of the new formats, it would have been way more useful to apply the patch sitting in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=388567 where multiple people prodded you for an upload. I must say here that I'm at least partially to blame for this. I said I would take care of it and never really did when I got too involved with other activities. We had someone interested in changing more svn-bp stuff to make support of multiple formats easier in general but that seems to have stalled as well. Neil is maintainer of the package but I'm listed as uploader and as such will now discuss with them an upload of svn-bp with your patch applied. Hauke signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Mike Hommey wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? I don't think that Raphael's mail was meant to insist on you all have to use the new source format but rather to correct/try to understand Niel's blogpost. Even if you don't like the new source format, I find that insisting on not using it with no reason¹ and saying that out loud is quite counterproductive. Besides, may I remind you the existence of this page http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/NewDebFormats ? ¹: I didn't find any real reason in the mentioned blogpost. Cheers, -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bab55f1.7040...@dogguy.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 01:24:17PM +0100, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Mike Hommey wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? I don't think that Raphael's mail was meant to insist on you all have to use the new source format but rather to correct/try to understand Niel's blogpost. Even if you don't like the new source format, I find that insisting on not using it with no reason¹ and saying that out loud is quite counterproductive. Besides, may I remind you the existence of this page http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/NewDebFormats ? May I remind that several persons pointed out this was not a good goal ? Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325123048.ga5...@glandium.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Mike Hommey wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 01:24:17PM +0100, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: […] Besides, may I remind you the existence of this page http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/NewDebFormats ? May I remind that several persons pointed out this was not a good goal ? This is not a reason to diminish someone else's work, IMHO. And whether this is a good goal or not is not the subject of this thread. -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bab597f.6040...@dogguy.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:58:39PM +0100, Mike Hommey wrote: Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? In fact, I don't feel this is the point [1]. The new lintian warning, which triggered the various blog posts, simply complains about the lack of _explicit_ information about which is the source package format in the tested package. In general, making explicit information that was implicit before, is a good thing. No matter how much the new format is liked/disliked, it is a fact that we currently have more than one source format supported by our toolchain, from dpkg up to dak. As a maintainer, I'm happy to have a way to make explicit the format I want to use for my package, rather than relying on an external default value which is not under my control. Since the goal of having such default explicit seems a worthwhile one to me, I'm also happy that lintian reminds me about that. Cheers. [1] hey, I want to join the you're missing the point club :-) -- Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7 z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/ Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Mike Hommey wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? I believe there's a benefit in standardizing on a set of improved source formats. There might be not short term benefit for the current maintainer, but it's a benefit for our derivatives distributions to be able to simply add patches in a consistent manner. It will also be a benefit for Debian if in 2 years some newbie packager doesn't have to learn about the limitations of the source format 1.0 when they try to add an icon to a source package or when they package a new upstream version that is now bzip2 compressed. In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt) and you're done. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325130309.gc3...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 02:03:09PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Mike Hommey wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:49:55PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: 2/ You explain that you have no reason to switch to the new formats. Fine. I have explained you that I believe there are good reasons for switching (I won't repeat the wiki page). Why are you insisting to not switch when the effort to change is so low in packages without patches? Do you have technical reasons to explicitly avoid the new formats? Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? I believe there's a benefit in standardizing on a set of improved source formats. But you clearly have not convinced all maintainers of this; based on past list discussions, I would suggest that there isn't even consensus on this, let alone unanimity. And the lintian warning goes away by explicitly setting source format to 1, so that's not standardizing on the set of improved source formats /anyway/, that's just nagging maintainers to make a change to their packages that AFAICS only helps your real goal if they actually *convert* the package to 3.0 in the process. I think trying to use lintian as a cudgel here is counterproductive, particularly so long as the 3.0 format is still not supported as well as 1.0 by all the peripheral packaging tools. Please understand that I'm not /opposed/ to the conversion to 3.0; in fact, for a new package the Debian Samba team just uploaded that has a .tar.bz2 upstream, we've recognized the advantages of using 3.0 (quilt) and when I ran into snags in the surrounding package toolchain I submitted patches. But the 3.0 transition should be done the way such transitions in Debian are always done - gradually, and respectful of our maintainers' investments in the existing tools. Thus far, I don't think you have a critical mass of mindshare behind 3.0, and I think it's wrong (and self-defeating) to try to force that. There might be not short term benefit for the current maintainer, but it's a benefit for our derivatives distributions to be able to simply add patches in a consistent manner. Which derivative distribution has asked for this? Speaking with my Ubuntu hat on, the sudden arrival of 3.0 in sid (yes, we knew it was coming eventually, but had no inkling of a probable timeline until it was already done) has been nothing but a hassle for us, requiring a sudden allocation of resources to let the Launchpad archive handle 3.0 packages /at all/, and leaving tools like merges.ubuntu.com broken for several months until someone could find the time to make them work with 3.0. So please don't claim to be speaking for derivatives here. I think you're being patronizing to both DDs *and* derivatives by telling them you know what's best for them. It will also be a benefit for Debian if in 2 years some newbie packager doesn't have to learn about the limitations of the source format 1.0 when they try to add an icon to a source package or when they package a new upstream version that is now bzip2 compressed. In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt) and you're done. Aside from all the packaging tools that aren't quite there yet with 3.0 support, 3.0 packages break two cheap generic tools that I used to be able to use to inspect source packages: zless, and interdiff. While this loss doesn't outweigh the benefits, this is certainly not win-win, and I would appreciate it if you would try to be more understanding of developers' natural resistance to this change. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Le jeudi 25 mars 2010 à 06:36 -0700, Steve Langasek a écrit : Which derivative distribution has asked for this? Speaking with my Ubuntu hat on, the sudden arrival of 3.0 in sid (yes, we knew it was coming eventually, but had no inkling of a probable timeline until it was already done) has been nothing but a hassle for us, requiring a sudden allocation of resources to let the Launchpad archive handle 3.0 packages /at all/, and leaving tools like merges.ubuntu.com broken for several months until someone could find the time to make them work with 3.0. While it is interesting to know that the lack of Ubuntu involvement into Debian can also lead to major breakage on your side, I fail to see how it relates to the point made by Raphaël. In the long term, having a unified patching system *will* make things easier for derived distributions. Cheers, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' “A handshake with whitnesses is the same `- as a signed contact.” -- Jörg Schilling -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1269527951.31081.18.ca...@meh
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Steve Langasek wrote: And the lintian warning goes away by explicitly setting source format to 1, so that's not standardizing on the set of improved source formats /anyway/, that's just nagging maintainers to make a change to their packages that AFAICS only helps your real goal if they actually *convert* the package to 3.0 in the process. I think trying to use lintian as a cudgel here is counterproductive, particularly so long as the 3.0 format is still not supported as well as 1.0 by all the peripheral packaging tools. If you read the lintian bug report (#566820), I requested a pedantic tag that would be emitted if it's still using 1.0 even in that case. Russ removed that because it's too soon for this according to him. I'm fine with this decision. As far as the peripheral packaging tools, which ones are really blocking the adoption of the new source format? Note that the lintian message specifically requests to contact us if you decide to stick with 1.0 for such a technical reason. That's done that way so that I can help resolve those problems. No later than this morning I contacted the launchpad guys to allow new source formats in karmic PPA because one DD continued to use 1.0 for this reason. The other major blocker that I heard is backports.org not accepting the new source formats and the backports.org maintainer is not willing to upgrade dak, he prefers to wait until it's host below debian.org. But the 3.0 transition should be done the way such transitions in Debian are always done - gradually, and respectful of our maintainers' investments in the existing tools. Thus far, I don't think you have a critical mass of mindshare behind 3.0, and I think it's wrong (and self-defeating) to try to force that. I fully respect the decision of people that are using tools that do not cope with the new source formats (or that have workflows that do not integrate well with the new source formats) but I'm annoyed by people who are staying with the old format without giving a valid reason (that's what triggered this thread). In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt) and you're done. Aside from all the packaging tools that aren't quite there yet with 3.0 support, 3.0 packages break two cheap generic tools that I used to be able to use to inspect source packages: zless, and interdiff. While this loss doesn't outweigh the benefits, this is certainly not win-win, and I would appreciate it if you would try to be more understanding of developers' natural resistance to this change. So it breaks some of your habits. I can understand that and it's precisely the kind of feedback that I want so that I can ensure that we have tools that make it easier for you to deal with the new formats. Do you have found replacement tools that suit you or is there still a need for improved tools here? For interdiff most people switched to debdiff but it has the disadvantage to include the upstream change when the upstream version changed. Maybe it should grow a --debian-dir option to only compare the debian directory ? (In that case, it could also lead to an optimization when comparing two 3.0 packages because you can only unpack the debian.tar instead of unpacking the full source package) For zless, people seem to open the debian.tar with vim or similar but I can understand that it's less usable than a simple pager view of the relevant files. Maybe it's a good idea to provide a debreview/debinspect command in devscripts that would show the files in debian/ in a standardized order that facilitates the review? I'm going to fill wishlist bugs against devscripts for this: #575394 and #575395 Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325150759.gd3...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 03:39:11PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le jeudi 25 mars 2010 à 06:36 -0700, Steve Langasek a écrit : Which derivative distribution has asked for this? Speaking with my Ubuntu hat on, the sudden arrival of 3.0 in sid (yes, we knew it was coming eventually, but had no inkling of a probable timeline until it was already done) has been nothing but a hassle for us, requiring a sudden allocation of resources to let the Launchpad archive handle 3.0 packages /at all/, and leaving tools like merges.ubuntu.com broken for several months until someone could find the time to make them work with 3.0. While it is interesting to know that the lack of Ubuntu involvement into Debian can also lead to major breakage on your side, This is not Ubuntu is not involved in Debian, this is the status of 3.0 in Debian was in limbo for months on end and suddenly landed in dak without significant prior public discussion or coordination. The request for dpkg v3 support in bug #457345 first happened in April 2008, with almost no indication of progress until it suddenly landed in October 2009 - and, to the contrary, I remember seeing repeated comments from Raphaël on IRC during this time expressing frustration at the delays in getting the changes merged. Personally, I had doubts that it was going to land at all for squeeze given those facts. But even if the fault lies entirely with Ubuntu and you think Ubuntu is evil and should be disregarded in all discussions of derivatives (which comes across loud and clear in your message), I don't know why you would expect the transition to be smoother for other derivatives. I fail to see how it relates to the point made by Raphaël. In the long term, having a unified patching system *will* make things easier for derived distributions. I don't see any evidence that dpkg v3 will make a non-negligible difference to this. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 04:07:59PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: For zless, people seem to open the debian.tar with vim or similar but I can understand that it's less usable than a simple pager view of the relevant files. Maybe it's a good idea to provide a debreview/debinspect command in devscripts that would show the files in debian/ in a standardized order that facilitates the review? This is only really helpful on systems with Debian tools installed - speaking personally my one of my most common use cases for inspecting the Debian diff with less is to do so on random systems I don't admin (or ask other people who don't have anything to do with Debian to do so). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325151308.gb7...@sirena.org.uk
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Le jeudi 25 mars 2010 à 08:40 -0700, Steve Langasek a écrit : While it is interesting to know that the lack of Ubuntu involvement into Debian can also lead to major breakage on your side, But even if the fault lies entirely with Ubuntu and you think Ubuntu is evil and should be disregarded in all discussions of derivatives (which comes across loud and clear in your message), If you think lack of involvement is enough to disregard an organization and consider it evil, that’s your sole opinion, not mine. I don't know why you would expect the transition to be smoother for other derivatives. I’d expect it to be much smoother for an organization that uses Debian tools and works with us to add missing functionality in them if needed, than for an organization that uses its own tools. I fail to see how it relates to the point made by Raphaël. In the long term, having a unified patching system *will* make things easier for derived distributions. I don't see any evidence that dpkg v3 will make a non-negligible difference to this. While not high on my priorities, I consider a unified patching system a worthwhile goal. We use an embryonic derived distribution at work, and having to deal with dpatch or whatnot, depending on the package, is not helping. Cheers, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' “A handshake with whitnesses is the same `- as a signed contact.” -- Jörg Schilling -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1269532659.31081.29.ca...@meh
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On 2010-03-25, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: I’d expect it to be much smoother for an organization that uses Debian tools and works with us to add missing functionality in them if needed, than for an organization that uses its own tools. You seriously don't want to force dak upon everyone. And there is not even a package. (And the same is true for wanna-build, sadly.) Kind regards, Philipp Kern -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/slrnhqn33e.tln.tr...@kelgar.0x539.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Am Donnerstag, den 25.03.2010, 16:16 + schrieb Philipp Kern: On 2010-03-25, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: I’d expect it to be much smoother for an organization that uses Debian tools and works with us to add missing functionality in them if needed, than for an organization that uses its own tools. You seriously don't want to force dak upon everyone. And there is not even a package. (And the same is true for wanna-build, sadly.) Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? -- Benjamin Drung Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Maintainer (www.debian.org) signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Benjamin Drung bdr...@ubuntu.com wrote: Hi, Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? Have you ever tried to install dak? If you have, then the answer should be obvious to you. If you haven't, try it someday, and you'll understand. JB. -- Julien BLACHE - Debian GNU/Linux Developer - jbla...@debian.org Public key available on http://www.jblache.org - KeyID: F5D6 5169 GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87aatw8hkv@sonic.technologeek.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Am Donnerstag, den 25.03.2010, 17:57 +0100 schrieb Julien BLACHE: Benjamin Drung bdr...@ubuntu.com wrote: Hi, Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? Have you ever tried to install dak? No. If you have, then the answer should be obvious to you. If you haven't, try it someday, and you'll understand. Reading your response, I probably want to spend my year doing something else like coding or packaging. Is there a plan for making the installation of dak easier? -- Benjamin Drung Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Maintainer (www.debian.org) signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Benjamin Drung bdr...@ubuntu.com wrote: Hi, Is there a plan for making the installation of dak easier? The issue (if there actually is an issue there, which is debatable) is not so much that dak is hard to install (because it's such a beast and the documentation isn't exactly stellar) but rather that dak is very Debian-specific and using it outside Debian without replicating the Debian infrastructure and workflow requires a lot of work and patching. Put another way, dak may not be the tool you're looking for in the first place. JB. -- Julien BLACHE - Debian GNU/Linux Developer - jbla...@debian.org Public key available on http://www.jblache.org - KeyID: F5D6 5169 GPG Fingerprint : 935A 79F1 C8B3 3521 FD62 7CC7 CD61 4FD7 F5D6 5169 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ocic71uh@sonic.technologeek.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 05:19:41PM +0100, Benjamin Drung wrote: Why is there no dak and wanna-build package? Are there plans to create such packages? This does not truly answer your question, but since my theory would be unpleasant to the members of core teams, I offer you this instead: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=449429 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325175841.ga9...@scru.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:58:39PM +0100, Mike Hommey wrote: Why are you insisting that all DDs should switch when switching is an effort for no benefit[1] and not switching is no effort at all ? In fact, I don't feel this is the point [1]. The new lintian warning, which triggered the various blog posts, simply complains about the lack of _explicit_ information about which is the source package format in the tested package. In general, making explicit information that was implicit before, is a good thing. Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87k4t0jmqo@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org writes: And the lintian warning goes away by explicitly setting source format to 1, so that's not standardizing on the set of improved source formats /anyway/, that's just nagging maintainers to make a change to their packages that AFAICS only helps your real goal if they actually *convert* the package to 3.0 in the process. I think trying to use lintian as a cudgel here is counterproductive, particularly so long as the 3.0 format is still not supported as well as 1.0 by all the peripheral packaging tools. I don't believe Lintian is being used as a cudgel here. I'm one of the people who does not currently plan to convert many of my packages to the 3.0 format, so I'm a bit sensitive to that. I think Lintian is being proactive in helping people avoid surprises should the dpkg-dev default change, which to me seems like a good thing to do. The question of whether to change the dpkg-dev default is, of course, a separate discussion, but *were* it to change, I would want to ensure that several of my packages still use the 1.0 format anyway. The long tag description probably could be improved to make it clearer that the intention isn't to be a cudgel. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fx3ojmmq@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org writes: And the lintian warning goes away by explicitly setting source format to 1, so that's not standardizing on the set of improved source formats /anyway/, that's just nagging maintainers to make a change to their packages that AFAICS only helps your real goal if they actually *convert* the package to 3.0 in the process. I think trying to use lintian as a cudgel here is counterproductive, particularly so long as the 3.0 format is still not supported as well as 1.0 by all the peripheral packaging tools. I don't believe Lintian is being used as a cudgel here. I'm one of the people who does not currently plan to convert many of my packages to the 3.0 format, so I'm a bit sensitive to that. I think Lintian is being proactive in helping people avoid surprises should the dpkg-dev default change, which to me seems like a good thing to do. It's a combination of both. Here are the reasons that led me to submit this wishlist request: - several people commented that being explicit about the desired format is better than trying to guess the desired format based on what's requested (command line options to change compression scheme for example) and what's available (orig.tar file mainly). http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=557459 - I'm still undecided whether I will change the default format in dpkg-source but obviously once all packages provide debian/source/format, I will be able to make the change without much bad impact. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=553928 - the adoption rate of the new format is pretty good but that's also because I promoted it a lot so that maintainers currently have it in their mind when updating their packages. Having lintian remind them for packages where they have not yet decided which format to use is a good thing to keep the steady rate. http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/dpkg-v3/ - the message in the lintian warning also asks for feedback because I want to know why people decide to not use the newer formats so that I can try fixing/improving whatever is needed. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325191230.ga5...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Russ Allbery wrote: Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. I disagree - my packages are in source format 1, I should *not* have to do *anything* to them to say that and if Lintian warns me about them being in sf1 and not saying so then that is a bug in Lintian. It should *never* be a requirement of an existing system that it be changed to state that it is such just because a newer system exists. Colin -- Colin Tuckley | +44(0)1223 293413 | PGP/GnuPG Key Id Debian Developer | +44(0)7799 143369 | 0x1B3045CE -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4babbb24.7020...@debian.org
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Colin Tuckley col...@debian.org writes: Russ Allbery wrote: Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. I disagree - my packages are in source format 1, I should *not* have to do *anything* to them to say that and if Lintian warns me about them being in sf1 and not saying so then that is a bug in Lintian. It should *never* be a requirement of an existing system that it be changed to state that it is such just because a newer system exists. Well, certainly the goal of Lintian is not to produce tags for which the project consensus is that nothing should be done about. If people don't feel like this is a good idea, we can remove it. It made sense to me personally, but that isn't a deciding criteria. My main goal with Lintian is to help people catch latent bugs in their packages, which includes some degree of future-proofing. But if it warns about things people are adamant about not changing, or find pointless, then they stop running it and then it doesn't achieve *any* of its goals. This is always a tradeoff, so it's hard to make decisions based on a small number of opinions (see previous discussion of Standards-Version), but I want to try to balance the tradeoff as well as possible. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ljdgi3xf@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Hi, On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:10:39AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. I think in the long run (i.e. squeeze+2) it will make sense to deprecate 1.0, as there is nothing that 1.0 can do that 3.0 can't, and being able to remove 1.0 support from the dpkg codebase then might be a good idea from a maintenance POV. Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325194214.ga9...@honey.hogyros.de
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Hi, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org (25/03/2010): Well, certainly the goal of Lintian is not to produce tags for which the project consensus is that nothing should be done about. If people don't feel like this is a good idea, we can remove it. It made sense to me personally, but that isn't a deciding criteria. JFTR, I very much agree with your (lintian folks) approach in general, as well as with points 1, 2, and 4 of [1] in particular. 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/03/msg00821.html (I don't plan to resist the switch, I just didn't do so yet because of lack of time, no immediate benefits, and some minor annoyances instead, like #572526.) Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:42:20 -0700 Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: Colin Tuckley col...@debian.org writes: I wasn't going to contribute to this thread but the initial bun fight seems to have calmed down and people are starting to talk sense. I'll do everything I can to keep it that way by ignoring unhelpful comments. Russ Allbery wrote: Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. I disagree - my packages are in source format 1, I should *not* have to do *anything* to them to say that and if Lintian warns me about them being in sf1 and not saying so then that is a bug in Lintian. Agreed, although I think the real bug is in dpkg not being able to cope without a new file. The idea that all source packages are going to have to be re-uploaded with a single 6 byte file is crazy. There will inevitably be hundreds, if not thousands, of source format 1.0 packages in the archive for many releases to come - most undeclared. For dpkg maintainers to think otherwise is hopelessly optimistic. There's no RC stick pushing this change. It should *never* be a requirement of an existing system that it be changed to state that it is such just because a newer system exists. It also isn't lintian's fault that this is being done - if dpkg cannot easily tell one version from another without every package adding a file, that is a bug in dpkg for which lintian has no particular role. Lintian should not work around bugs. Well, certainly the goal of Lintian is not to produce tags for which the project consensus is that nothing should be done about. If people don't feel like this is a good idea, we can remove it. It made sense to me personally, but that isn't a deciding criteria. Removing the tag without fixing dpkg to not require debian/source/format for source format 1.0 packages. That bug does need to be fixed. I've only altered a few of my packages in SVN - none of those need an upload particularly soon - so if there's a realistic chance that dpkg will never assert format 3.0 in the absence of debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) My main goal with Lintian is to help people catch latent bugs in their packages, which includes some degree of future-proofing. But if it warns about things people are adamant about not changing, or find pointless, then they stop running it and then it doesn't achieve *any* of its goals. I'm not at that point - lintian is far too useful in other areas - but that is why I raised the initial comment about the issue. I think it is wrong for lintian to nag in this way - if dpkg is broken, dpkg should be fixed. This is always a tradeoff, so it's hard to make decisions based on a small number of opinions (see previous discussion of Standards-Version), but I want to try to balance the tradeoff as well as possible. Overall, lintian has done an extremely good job - one bad tag doesn't discount the overwhelming good done by the rest of the tags. It was never my intention to blame lintian in all this, just highlight that this one tag is, IMHO, not up to the usual standard of lintian. -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ pgpyaEuhk2YKf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Simon Richter wrote: On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 11:10:39AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Yes. I explicitly declined to add a Lintian tag warning about all use of format 1.0 because I don't believe there's consensus to deprecate it. But the request to note the format explicitly seemed reasonable to me. I think in the long run (i.e. squeeze+2) it will make sense to deprecate 1.0, as there is nothing that 1.0 can do that 3.0 can't, and being able to remove 1.0 support from the dpkg codebase then might be a good idea from a maintenance POV. I have no plan to remove the support for format 1.0 (if only to be able to unpack very old source packages). I might still want to deprecate the format at some point in the distant future in the sense that it would display a warning when building a source package using format 1.0 but that's about it. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325203445.gc5...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Agreed, although I think the real bug is in dpkg not being able to cope without a new file. In what way dpkg doesn't cope? The change requested by the lintian tag is preventive, not corrective. The idea that all source packages are going to have to be re-uploaded with a single 6 byte file is crazy. There will inevitably be hundreds, if not thousands, of source format 1.0 packages in the archive for many releases to come - most undeclared. For dpkg maintainers to think otherwise is hopelessly optimistic. There's no RC stick pushing this change. And? What's the problem if it takes several releases to get to the point where all package are explicit about the desired source format? debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) Doing that means “I don't want to hardcode the format to use, I want to use whatever the dpkg maintainers feel best as default”. It's not really what you want I think. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325204259.gd5...@rivendell
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:42:59 +0100 Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: Agreed, although I think the real bug is in dpkg not being able to cope without a new file. In what way dpkg doesn't cope? I'm not sure, I got that impression - otherwise why do existing packages need to be changed? I concur with Wouter's comment in the bug report you mentioned earlier: #557459 (comment #10) I believe dpkg-source should work in a similar way: if there is no debian/source/format file, dpkg-source should not try anything beyond 1.0 level formats. That would be the best behaviour IMHO. What was the reason for requiring a file in source 1.0 ? The bug report doesn't indicate any reason for that step. Absence of the file is sufficient to determine that only methods from format 1.0 should be attempted. If the user specifies something different, dpkg should report that as a user error and possibly continue to operate in the normal 1.0 manner. Again from Wouter's comments: It is of course perfectly fine for dpkg-source to error out if it detects that things are not completely in order, or if it detects that features were requested that are not supported with the source format that is in use. But it should not silently assume another format is probably to be used if things are not entirely what they should have been. The absence of debian/source/format means 1.0 and dpkg should not assert anything else or behave as if it really is 3.0 or something else. No file means format 1.0 and format 1.0 means never having the file. That's the simplicity that I like. The issue with confusion from 3.0 is real and 3.0 formats should be uniquely identifiable. That's good and sensible. 1.0 is not in that group. If dpkg has problems with that situation, it would be a bug in dpkg and nothing to do with preventative measures in lintian. The change requested by the lintian tag is preventive, not corrective. So what bug is to be prevented? What is the problem with format 1.0 packages not having debian/source/format ? Is there a reproducible error that can be tested (and fixed) or is it hand-waving about possible fears and regrets about not having something like this when 1.0 was first designed? (In other words, is it a bug or FUD.) Lintian is not about dealing with bugs in other packages, neither should it be abused as an engine of FUD. The idea that all source packages are going to have to be re-uploaded with a single 6 byte file is crazy. There will inevitably be hundreds, if not thousands, of source format 1.0 packages in the archive for many releases to come - most undeclared. For dpkg maintainers to think otherwise is hopelessly optimistic. There's no RC stick pushing this change. And? What's the problem if it takes several releases to get to the point where all package are explicit about the desired source format? You must have some idea of how much work that entails? Maintainers shouldn't be pushed through unnecessary work merely to cope with hand-waving about possible problems that we haven't clarified yet and behind which is an obvious lack of consensus. I have no idea what this change is trying to prevent and nobody so far has spelt out what happens if dpkg is forced to treat all packages omitting debian/source/format as source format 1.0. Is it a problem? What are we trying to fix here? It seems obvious that dpkg will have to deal with lots and lots of packages without debian/source/format for quite some time to come and that it will never be quite possible to retire source format 1.0. Packages without debian/source/format ARE explicit about the desired source format - 1.0 as defined by how 1.0 has always worked. Maybe that is a flaw in the original design of 1.0 but that is not something that can be fixed retrospectively. Live with it and carry on. The new lintian tag could be reversed to advise against debian/source/format UNLESS the file contains one of the 3.0 recognised strings. Then the mere presence or absence of the file is deterministic and a fraction of the total number of packages need changing. debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) Doing that means “I don't want to hardcode the format to use, I want to use whatever the dpkg maintainers feel best as default”. It's not really what you want I think. I did say until dpkg is fixed. I think the fix in dpkg needs to be that the lack of debian/source/format uniquely identifies source format 1.0 and that only source format 3.0 (and later) may use this file. Anything else would be a bug in the package and lintian would clearly be correct in asserting this as a definite error in the packaging. Any misbehaviour by dpkg upon the lack of debian/source/format is a bug in dpkg. Lintian won't save us from that. -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) Doing that means “I don't want to hardcode the format to use, I want to use whatever the dpkg maintainers feel best as default”. I would expect the absence of a ‘debian/source/format’ file to always mean “source format 1.0”, since that's already the case for all packages that were uploaded before different source formats were available. -- \“I think it would be a good idea.” —Mohandas K. Gandhi (when | `\asked what he thought of Western civilization) | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87bpecoyz9@benfinney.id.au
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org wrote: There might be not short term benefit for the current maintainer, but it's a benefit for our derivatives distributions to be able to simply add patches in a consistent manner. It will also be a benefit for Debian if in 2 years some newbie packager doesn't have to learn about the limitations of the source format 1.0 when they try to add an icon to a source package or when they package a new upstream version that is now bzip2 compressed. I see some different points: * more supported package compressions * only one patching system * alle patches in debian/patches are applied * one extra file for 3.0 And each point have people who support this change and other people who don't want it. I think this is human. And this is a competition. I find it would be the best way, at this time, to let all DD and DM make their own experiences with the new format and wait some time who they are decide in a longer distance ... In the general case, switching is a small effort for sure, but in the case pointed out by Neil (he won't convert packages with no patches because he doesn't see the benefit) the effort is almost null, just create the file debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt) and you're done. At the beginning I haven't seen any advantage of the new format for me. But I switched and had some problems with the new format, i.e. I found it not very useful that all patches are applied. But this is one point. All other points are advancements. So let us discuss factually about single points, but without generally speak evil of the new format 3.0. Fondest regards, Joachim Wiedorn signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
I revisited both the Lintian tag and the long description in light of this discussion and some private feedback, and for the next release of Lintian have tentatively made the following changes: * The tag was previously severity: normal. Lintian tag severities should match bug severities were one to file a bug about the tag, and I think everyone would agree that no one would file a normal severity bug about this at this point. I've changed the severity to wishlist instead, which I think more accurately reflects the current severity of this request. I should have caught that originally; almost all submitted tags for Lintian require some tweaking to the certainty and severity. * I've revised the long description to try to make it come across as less insistent, as several people weren't very happy with the wording. It now says: N: missing-debian-source-format N: N: To allow for possible future changes in the default source format, N: explicitly selecting a source format by creating debian/source/format N: is recommended. N: N: If you don't have a reason to stay with the old format for this N: package, please consider switching to 3.0 (quilt) (for packages with N: a separate upstream tarball) or to 3.0 (native) (for Debian native N: packages). N: N: If you wish to keep using the old format, please create that file and N: put 1.0 in it to be explicit about the source package version. If N: you have problems with the 3.0 format, the dpkg maintainers are N: interested in hearing, at debian-d...@lists.debian.org, the N: (technical) reasons why the new formats do not suit you N: N: Refer to the dpkg-source(1) manual page and N: http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/DebSrc3.0 for details. N: N: Severity: wishlist, Certainty: certain I hope this is a reasonable compromise between the various stances on the new source format. None of this is set in stone, or has gone anywhere other than the Lintian Git repository, and we can definitely change it further based on additional feedback. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87hbo39b6j@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: About new source formats for packages without patches
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 08:47:22AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: On Thu, 25 Mar 2010, Neil Williams wrote: debian/source/format, I'll override the lintian warning until dpkg is fixed. (Already done that for a few packages.) Doing that means “I don't want to hardcode the format to use, I want to use whatever the dpkg maintainers feel best as default”. I would expect the absence of a ‘debian/source/format’ file to always mean “source format 1.0”, since that's already the case for all packages that were uploaded before different source formats were available. Quite. If it's really so important to the dpkg maintainers that source format 1.0 is declared, why doesn't dpkg-source -b *generate* this content automatically as part of the .diff.gz so that maintainers aren't being asked to take a manual action to assert the status quo? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature