On April 25, 2014 11:02:29 PM Ben Finney wrote: > Neil Williams <codeh...@debian.org> writes: > > On Fri, 25 Apr 2014 01:16:04 +0100 > > > > Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montez...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I don't think that we should go and do the tedious work of repack > > > thousands of packages because of this, with no real benefit in terms > > > of freedom (or any other) for our users -- provided that we depend > > > and link to the canonical versions in the binary packages. > > We promise the source for everything any recipient downloads as part of > Debian. If non-source files are distributed in Debian source packages, > without a way to confidently guarantee the corresponding source is > what's already available in Debian, then that is a definite impact on > the freedom of Debian recipients: it threatens the freedom promises in > the Social Contract.
That is certainly not a universally held view. Some of us [1] regard random trash littering the source distribution -- but not used in generating the actual software (binary distribution) -- as merely a nuisance that can be tolerated. I have to say that this absolutist zeal in scrubbing the source package grates on me for two reasons. FIrst, it introduces an undocumented difference between upstream source and Debian source. Second, it adds a bunch of busywork that distracts and, frankly, de-motivates me from working on packaging. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/03/msg00270.html -Steve
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