On Wed, Jul 29 2009, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote: > Manoj Srivastava wrote: >> I think that we would need a clear policy of what packages are >> expected to do as well. Policy does not mandate that helper packages be >> used in Debian packages, and we can't suddenly start mandating that >> they be used. > > I think you misunderstood it. The archive would start to accept > .ddebs, but they won't be mandatory. Then packages using > debhelper/whatever would build .ddeb packages if appropriate, but > packages not using helper tools would keep working as they do now, not > building .ddebs (not automatically by debhelper at least, but they > could build them manually or use some other mechanism) and would still > be accepted. So nothing would be forced to use helper tools. It's > rather that if you want automatic .ddeb packages, you can get them > with debhelper, but you can build them manually or use something else > if you wish. Not ideal, but I haven't found a better alternative.
On the contrary, I think you are missing the point. The work-unit put in by developers is not the only issue this brings up, We do not want to have different helper package start inventing a helper specific way of building ddebs, with no clear standard tha they are following. >> So, we figure out first exactly what needs to be done, and then >> the helper packages implement that standard; as opposed to the standard >> being whatever the current helper package implementation happens to be. > > That would be, packages may start to build .ddeb packages. Then helper > tools or packages themselves can do the work to build them. For helper > tools, we would get them automatically without any changes to the > packages themselves, and that's something around 97% of the archive. While archive coverage is nice, ensuring that a ddeb is properly defined, and that all the different ways of creating ddebs are consistent, should happen first. Coming up with a standard and policy after the fact, with 97% of the archive not quite following policy would be a nightmare, no? manoj -- Chown up. Chow down. Manoj Srivastava <sriva...@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/> 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org