On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 02:03:23PM -0600, Graham Wilson wrote: > i frequently see in am summaries that am's ask prospective developers > to package something without debhelper. why is this?
Some people seem to think that that shows understanding of the packaging format, policy and procedures (e.g. you actually know what dh_gencontrol does). I don't completely share that view (e.g. you might know what dh_gencontrol does, but you don't understand why), and I didn't use to ask that sort of question. Nevertheless, I resorted to it once, in a case where I had my doubts about the NM's understanding of the packaging procedures. Most of my packages use debhelper, but there's one that doesn't. I adopted it from someone else, and back then I decided it would be a nice exercise to keep it that way. I can't really say I have learned much because of that, but it's sort of fun. The interesting stuff done in that particular debian/rules file would still be there if it used debhelper instead. I guess it's the same reasoning behind having a student solve an ODE "by hand" instead of using a Laplace transform (where applicable). The later will be probably easier, but the former will let the teacher see that the stundent "understands" what's going on (not really). By this kind of reasoning, asking the NM to create a package using nothing but tar, ar and other common Unix utilities would be a fair question (I'd be surprised if more than 1% of the developers could do it). -- Marcelo
