I've uploaded Dropbox again to Debian mentors; it includes several suggested fixes, and it's now one step closer to possibly being accepted into Debian. (This isn't my final upload though.)
The package can be found on mentors.debian.net: - URL: http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/non-free/d/dropbox - Source repository: deb-src http://mentors.debian.net/debian unstable main contrib non-free - dget http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/non-free/d/dropbox/dropbox_1.0.20-2.dsc Of the 52 libraries that was originally in the source tarball and in my first upload, only a few remain. I've managed to track down the origins of most of the libraries with apt-file, and instead of including those libraries in the source tarball, I've set those packages as build-depends and used dh_link to establish symlinks to Dropbox's directory. Dropbox now depends on the following packages: python2.5, python-dbus, libbz2-1.0, libssl0.9.8, libdbus-1-3, libdbus-glib-1-2, libpng12-0, libpopt0, librsync1, libsqlite3-0, libssl0.9.8, libstdc++6, libwxbase2.8-dbg, python-wxgtk2.8, zlib1g, python-simplejson, python-netifaces (I've chosen python2.5 over python2.6/3.1 because python2.5 includes all the python-related libraries that Dropbox needs, whereas python2.6/3.1 only includes some.) The following libraries/binaries are still present in the source tarball I've uploaded. - _librsync.so: not present in librsync1. apt-file says that it's included in the packages "rdiff-backup" and "duplicity", but I'm unsure if they are the same libraries. - dropbox: the actual dropbox binary - fastpath.so: I have no idea what this library is, or what purpose it serves. - ncrypt/*: ncrypt is not yet packaged for Debian. It seems that this package has already been requested in a RFP bug report for "python-ncrypt". (http://bugs.debian.org/528358) - netifaces/netifaces.pyc: this Python bytecode file doesn't seem to be in Debian's python-netifaces package. I've no idea whether or not this is needed, but I've included it at the moment for safe measure. Eventually, only "dropbox" will be left in the source tarball. I'll have to find some way between now and my next upload(s) to get rid of the remaining libraries. It looks like I may also have to package python-ncrypt; if nobody else is interested in this package, I'll look into it in the next few days and try to package it. Incidentally, does anyone know where I might possibly find the origin of "_librsync.so" or "fastpath.so"? To address a few of the questions/comments I've received over the past few days: - I don't know Dropbox's actual distribution license, which is why the license for the dropbox binary in debian/copyright only consists of "Copyright 2008-2011 Dropbox, Inc. All rights reserved." I've contacted upstream to try and find out where I can obtain the actual license for the distribution of Dropbox. - While I don't have the text of the distribution license, the previous Dropbox maintainer has given me a copy of an e-mail conversation he had with a Dropbox employee who granted him permission to distribute Dropbox in Debian. See /usr/share/doc/dropbox/dropbox.mbox. Kind regards, ~ Vincent Cheng <vincentc1...@gmail.com>
