On Tuesday 23 January 2007 12:37, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 21:34 +1100, Andrew Donnellan wrote: > > What exactly are the advantages and disadvantages of making a > > Debian-native package, and is there any real policy or practice?
Hello, > I think this is a good rule: > > If the source is published outside of Debian, > do not make a native package. This is true, but I like that wording best: Policy#5.6.12 [1] [debian_revision] It is optional; if it isn't present then the upstream_version may not contain a hyphen. This format represents the case where a piece of software was written specifically to be turned into a Debian package, and so there is only one "debianisation" of it and therefore no revision indication is required. > The disadvantage of a native package is that there's no clear > separatation of what is upstream and what changes are made by Debian. > There's no clear advantage of using a native package as far as I know. > You only use a native package when there just isn't such a thing as an > upstream tarball (i.e.: there is no upstream, the package is only > developed within Debian). Right. Another disadvantage of making it a native package is that the orig.tar.gz (imagine monsters here, ... OpenOffice.org comes to mind ;-) has to be uploaded every time you change something in the package, even if this is a change specific to the debianisation process, and no new upstream version has been released. OTOH, having a debian_revision (i.e. a non-native package), when you change something to the debianisation process and create a new package with an increased debian revision number, you only need to upload the diff.gz to the Debian archive. [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version -- pub 4096R/0E4BD0AB 2003-03-18 <people.fccf.net/danchev/key pgp.mit.edu> fingerprint 1AE7 7C66 0A26 5BFF DF22 5D55 1C57 0C89 0E4B D0AB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
