Dear Debian mentors,
With regards to my request for sponsorship:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1146738
I did a precoordination with @spaciouskarter78 (his answer is public in the
RFS) and @tille by email. As per @tille's request, and with his explicit
permission to quote his comments to this mailing list, I would like to transfer
the discussion here, in the hopes that someone is willing to have a look over
my package.
I'll try my best to implement comments promptly and would appreciate a sponsor
to get this C++ library into unstable.
The Salsa repository can be found at
https://salsa.debian.org/lars_uffmann/libopenxlsx
The process (updated with the latest changes) that I used to prepare the
package is documented here - for now:
https://codeberg.org/lars_uffmann/knowledge-base/src/branch/master/debian-packaging-guide.md
If others consider that guide solid and in a "publishable state", I would in
principle be willing to add it to Debian resources. The emphasis of my guide is on
guiding a newbie like myself through the process of sbuild and Salsa integration in tiny
steps, with success criteria / checks after each. In this way, on a failure in any step,
the user is not lost among a large amount of errors and tons of preconfigured
configuration files, but actually has a very small delta to the previous step and can
figure out with relatively low effort what they need to fix.
Below are @tille's comments to the previous commit to Salsa and my responses.
On 2026-09-08 18:14:09, Andreas Tille wrote:
Hi Lars,
I admit I would prefer discussing such things on public lists to let
others profit from the discussion - but I'll answer private mails in
private. I'd recommend the debian-mentors mailing list in future.
-> done as requested.
However, I am sure you will have comments and I am happy to adopt best
practices (and incorporate them into the guide).
The remaining comment I have not yet addressed from Aryan is that my changelog
is too verbose:
* Initial release. (Closes: #1140161: ITP: openxlsx -- C++ library to
read/write Excel files (*.xlsx))
* Fixed all pending packaging inconsistencies
ACK - I would go with
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 6f05a01..cb2bf6d 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
openxlsx (0.5.2-1) unstable; urgency=medium
- * Initial release. (Closes: #1140161: ITP: openxlsx -- C++ library to
- read/write Excel files (*.xlsx))
- * Fixed all pending packaging inconsistencies
+ * Initial release. (Closes: #1140161)
-- Lars Uffmann<[email protected]> Sun, 06 Sep 2026 13:17:45 +0000
-> done, changelog is reduced to "Initial release. (Closes: #1140161)"
Thank you in advance for having a look :)
You are welcome. Here are some comments:
1. The "# --- PACKAGE" comments in d/control might help you. I have never
seen them in other packages and if these are not really important to
you I would rather drop these. Finally its explicitly mentioned inside
the description text.
-> removed comments from debian/control
2. I'd recommend
diff --git a/debian/copyright b/debian/copyright
index b13c9d1..99727bd 100644
--- a/debian/copyright
+++ b/debian/copyright
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
Format:https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
+Upstream-Name: OpenXLSX
+Source:https://codeberg.org/lars_uffmann/OpenXLSX
Files: *
Copyright: 2018, 2020, 2022, Kenneth Troldal Balslev
These DEP5 fields are very helpful in d/copyright files.
-> added Source and Upstream-Name fields as requested to debian/copyright
(in this sequence because cme update dpkg-copyright applies this sequence when
used)
3. It is good style to add a section
Files: debian/*
Copyright:
License:
to d/copyright. In this specific case its also you who is the author
but assume if you might get co-maintainers its good to be prepared.
-> added debian/* entry to debian/copyright
4. The watch file is not working. This is a fix:
commit 917757e9a7c02f1c85f348f8d1518c55218697b2 (HEAD -> debian/latest)
Author: Andreas Tille<[email protected]>
Date: Tue Sep 8 18:08:05 2026 +0200
Fix watch file
diff --git a/debian/watch b/debian/watch
index 9d7e89e..b6da04c 100644
--- a/debian/watch
+++ b/debian/watch
@@ -2,5 +2,5 @@ Version: 5
Mode: git
Pgp-Mode: none
-Source:https://codeberg.org/lars_uffmann/OpenXLSX/tags
+Source:https://codeberg.org/lars_uffmann/OpenXLSX/
Matching-Pattern: refs/tags/v@ANY_VERSION@
-> removed the trailing "tags" from "Source:" in debian/watch
5. Your repository is not featuring a pristine-tar branch. This comes
*very* handy if new upstream versions should be packaged and you want
your team mates to do a test build.
-> Added a pristine-tar branch to the repository
So for the moment I have not yet done a test build which I can do if you
confirm that you have fixed those items. As a general recommendation
please have a look at
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianCommons
I would welcome if you would use the Debian Commons team as maintainer to
express that other DDs are kindly invited to enhance your package.
-> I read the DebianCommons wiki page and added the following lines to
debian/control:
Maintainer: Debian Commons <[email protected]>
Uploaders:
Lars Uffmann <[email protected]>
Here's hoping that the repository is now in a relatively good shape for the
next iteration.
Feedback and comments (and a volunteer for sponsorship :) are very much
appreciated!
Kind regards
Lars
