Bug#947143: Bug#947212: Bug#947143: RFS: wordpress/5.3.2+dfsg1-0.1 [NMU] [RC] -- weblog manager

[Craig Small]

Hi Markus,
  Yes Nils was doing a nmu for me. Unless they are very keen I'll handle
the backports. As you said the confusion is on the sponsorship. We were
using a
Mentors as a way of getting the package from him to me in the standard way.

 - Craig


On Tue, 24 Dec. 2019, 4:27 am Markus Koschany,  wrote:

> Hello Niels,
>
> Am 23.12.19 um 15:04 schrieb DebBug:
>
> > Anyone to chime in? Craig? Markus?
>
> There is a bit of confusion here, so I try to explain the situation and
> how we should proceed. Thank you for filing bug report #947212 to track
> the security issues in Wordpress. This will help to answer those
> questions raised by Adam. However there was already #946905 that you
> could have been used as well.
>
> You have only recently added me to CC, presumably because I have done
> some security uploads in the past for Wordpress. I don't know what you
> have discussed with Craig and if he wants to review your work and
> sponsor it later. Then you actually don't need to open a sponsorship
> request on debian-mentors.
>
> Sponsorship requests are either of severity normal or important. Here it
> would be ok to use important but the severity is merely an indicator and
> it doesn't automatically guarantee that a bug is prioritized. Security
> related bugs like #947212/#946905 are either of severity important or
> grave.
>
> Version 5.3.2 seems to fix a couple of security vulnerabilities. No CVE
> has been assigned yet. This version should be uploaded to unstable.
>
> If you want to fix Wordpress in Buster and Stretch as well, then you
> have to go a different route. The security team is responsible for that.
> As previously discussed I recommend to base security updates on upstream
> releases for specific Wordpress branches.
>
> https://wordpress.org/download/releases/
>
> Buster should be updated to version 5.0.8 and Stretch to 4.7.16. In both
> cases you would base your work on the Wordpress packages in Buster and
> Stretch. The changes to the debian files should be minimal, you would
> merely rebase existing patches and repack the tarball to make it
> compliant with the DFSG.
>
> In short:
>
> Version 5.3.2 -> unstable
> Did Craig agree with the upload?
> If there is simply no response because of the holiday season we could do
> a NMU with a delay of 5 to 10 days. I assume you haven't made any major
> changes to the package.
>
> After that:
> Version 5.0.8 -> buster-security
> Version 4.7.16 -> stretch-security
>
> You can already prepare the packages, then we contact the security team
> and ask for approval.
>
> Regards,
>
> Markus
>
>

Bug#805172: RFS: vim-command-t/1.13-2 [ITP]

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 3:45 AM Sam Morris  wrote:

> I think this happens because you have vim 2:7.4.488-7 (from jessie)
> installed, which uses libruby2.1. vim in testing/unstable uses libruby2.2,
> so upgrading to this version would get things working.
>
It would, but the packaging system should ensure that whatever version of
vim is installed, the program will work or won't be installable.


> In fact, I'll probably just remove the version requirements on those
> build-dependencies entirely--they just get in the way when backporting
> the package to run on jessie.
>
Are you sure? Isn't this a linking problem?

To me the plugin is linked to ruby 2.2 and vim linked to ruby 2.1
It sort of needs a dpkg-shlibdeps type of thing going on, but with vim not
ldd.

  - Craig

Bug#805172: RFS: vim-command-t/1.13-2 [ITP]

[Craig Small]

Hmm, something isn't too happy :(

command-t.vim could not load the C extension

Please see INSTALLATION and TROUBLE-SHOOTING in the help

Vim Ruby version: 2.1.5-p273

Expected version: 2.2.3-p173

For more information type::help command-t

Press ENTER or type command to continue


So.. my pbuilder has ruby 2.2.3
but my vim is linked to libruby2.1.5
$ ldd /usr/bin/vim | grep ruby
libruby-2.1.so.2.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libruby-2.1.so.2.1
(0x7f891aef3000)

But, I have libruby2.2
So, how do you tell this package to only depend on a vim that is linked to
ruby2.2
or how do you tell command-t to link to the vim it knows about.


On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 10:51 PM Sam Morris <s...@robots.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, 2015-11-24 at 11:35 +, Craig Small wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 1:21 AM Sam Morris <s...@robots.org.uk> wrote:
> > > I am looking for a sponsor for my package "vim-command-t"
> > I tried building it but it looks like you are missing a dependency.
> >
> >
> > make[1]: Entering directory '/build/vim-command-t-1.13'
> > cd ruby/command-t && ruby extconf.rb
> > mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at
> > /usr/lib/ruby/include/ruby.h
> > debian/rules:7: recipe for target 'override_dh_auto_configure' failed
> > make[1]: *** [override_dh_auto_configure] Error 1
> > make[1]: Leaving directory '/build/vim-command-t-1.13'
> > debian/rules:4: recipe for target 'build' failed
> > make: *** [build] Error 2
> > dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2
> >
> >  - Craig
>
> Thanks for letting me know--seems I had ruby2.2-dev still installed on
> my machine so didn't notice the missing dependency. I've uploaded 1.13-
> 3 with the additional build-dependency added.
>
> --
> Sam Morris <https://robots.org.uk/>
> CAAA AA1A CA69 A83A 892B  1855 D20B 4202 5CDA 27B9
>
>

Bug#805172: RFS: vim-command-t/1.13-2 [ITP]

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 1:21 AM Sam Morris  wrote:

> I am looking for a sponsor for my package "vim-command-t"
>
I tried building it but it looks like you are missing a dependency.


make[1]: Entering directory '/build/vim-command-t-1.13'
cd ruby/command-t && ruby extconf.rb
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /usr/lib/ruby/include/ruby.h
debian/rules:7: recipe for target 'override_dh_auto_configure' failed
make[1]: *** [override_dh_auto_configure] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/build/vim-command-t-1.13'
debian/rules:4: recipe for target 'build' failed
make: *** [build] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2

 - Craig

Re: Bug#792144: RFS: cunit/2.1-2.dfsg-3 -- Unit Testing Library for C [ITA]

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 11:21:35AM +0300, Azat Khuzhin wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 11:33:32AM +1000, Riley Baird wrote:
> > d/copyright:
> > -In the LGPL license text, you've accidentally referred to the wrong
> > license:
> >  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
> 
> Hm, this is what dh_make have in:
> /usr/share/debhelper/dh_make/licenses/lgpl2
So it is! I've fixed that now.

 - Craig
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Re: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command line

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Sep 04, 2015 at 08:33:52PM +0200, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> "help" is not a helpful subject. I updated it, so that is provides some
> context.
:)

> If you want people to help you, you need to make it easy for them to
> understand and reproduce the problem. In case of compiler errors, including
> the compiler command that failed is absolute minimum.
Especially for this one, the common problem here is that the order of
options is wrong.

e.g. ld thing.o -lqdb -lthingqbneeds
So if libqdb needs symbols from libthingqdbneeds it will error like
this.

Sometimes the dpkg-buildflags (correctly) trips these things up. I've
found them a useful check for getting upstream in order.

But yes, as Jakub said, bit hard to debug this further without the
actual command line.

 - Craig

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Re: Some questions about copyrights

[Craig Small]

OK, Paul has talked about embedded copies which I agree with (leaving
aside the whole jquery thing) in general. Use the already packaged
libraries for that, your life will be better for it!

Turning to copyright files, the preferred format is the old DEP-5
format, found at [1]

The files stanzas, the last match wins. This means you want your general
ones first, then your more specific ones. So almost always Files: * is
first.

That license, assuming you are not using embedded copies, looks like
Unlicense[2] check that it is fully that and if not use a different
short name.

Also ensure you know the difference between the or later clauses. 
GPL-2+ means something different to GPL-2 and may mean it won't link
to future GPL code.

So you might have:

Files: *
Copyright: Copyright 1980 John Doe jd...@example.com
License: GPL-3+
 [gpl3 license stuff goes here]

Files: somedir/*
Copyright: Copyright 1999 John Doe2 f...@example.com
License: Unlicense
 [unlicense stuff goes here]


[1] https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
[2] http://spdx.org/licenses/Unlicense.html
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Re: dep5-copyright-license-name-not-unique

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2015 at 07:54:23PM +0100, Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
 Thanks, this makes the file much shorter. I just wonder why lintian
 does not accept the longer form (which, by my reading, is allowed as
 well).
My guess it is a coding error and when it was written the programmer
didn't consider duplicate and identical license clauses. It is checking
for duplicate license codes for different licenses.

 - Craig
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Re: Bug#749152: RFS: top/2.2.3-1 [ITP]

[Craig Small]

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 02:00:57AM +0200, Hugo Lefeuvre wrote:
 It should be done now. The new name of the binary is qtop.
 I've uploaded the package on mentos.debian.org.[0]
As the procps maintainer, thanks for doing this. We really don't want
to get the two confused!

 - Craig

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Re: No upstream versioning

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 09:14:08PM +1000, Benjamin Donald-Wilson wrote:
Thanks for the advice. Just one more quick question, should I use date of
the commit I'm using or the date that I package it? (last commit was
roughly 5 months ago)
Their commit date. The reason is there is at least some way of
tracing back to where you got that particular tar file.
So if I saw 20131224 I could look at the git log and see perhaps
you went from commit on 24 Dec 2013.

Your download date could be anything from their commit date to (if you
lived in New Zealand and waited 30 minutes) tomorrow's date.
That's really hard to work out.

Oh, and you don't get oddness like this:
  * They commit and push 1st April
  * They commit and don't push 2nd April
  * You download on 5th April and use version 20140405
(you can't see their 2nd April commit)
  * They eventually push their commits
  * Why doesn't 20140405 have the commit for 2nd April?

 - Craig
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Re: Question about a licensing problem

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 01:17:04PM +0100, Gert Wollny wrote:
 one version, 2.21 is GPL, but already for reasonable sized brain
 image data the code crashes, and the way the code is written there
 is no easy way to fix this, and hence, Oscar went with version 3.0,
 which works.
If the API is the same you might be able to have it depend on either,
or do something where the default behaviour is to use the GPL one
but be able to use the non-GPL one.

The problem with that approach is that someone has to maintain the 
GPLed version for at least some bug fixes. I don't know how big a job
that is, but it might be significant.

 - Craig

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Re: continue on a failing test (dh7)

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 06:21:24AM +, Roelof Wobben wrote:
 But then Im going to need a javascript expert. 
I'm not that!

 One of the test gives undefined where it schould be given a exception. 
 The whole file can be found here : 
 https://github.com/linuxmint/cjs/blob/master/test/js/testLocale.js
 
 if needed I can give the error logs. 
I suppose the need to decide what they do with invalid input.
Can upstream help here?

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Re: continue on a failing test (dh7)

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 09:20:06AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 Please don't do that , tests are there for a reason. It is better to
 fix the problem or fix the test than ignore the test.
To give an example of why this is important.

procps had a problem where it would fail on certain buildds. At first
I cursed the buildds, cursed the architectures and their flakyness.
Nothing I could do would reproduce it, but some buildds would, at
depressingly semi-regular times, complain.

Eventually the problem was the test was working but made assumptions
about the system. These are valid assumptions for a normal setup (you
wouldn't run it like this) however the program shouldn't of crashed
but complained or exited nicely.

I was *that* close to having a rule in the test setup that basically
said if the system is in this state, don't run test. This would of
masked a real bug in the program; which admittedly not many people will
ever see, but it shouldn't be there in the first place.

The bug is fixed now, the test will need some adjusting to cater for the
error message, but that's the correct way it should respond.

 - Craig
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Re: Rules for packaging forked software

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 11:31:20PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 Upstreams continue to disappoint me :(
I tend ending up as my own upstream a lot of the time, so I provide my
own disappointment.

Forks are a pain, but they often can be in the long run a benefit. This
is especially so if the parent project has gone dormant, which it sounds
like it for at least one of the cases.

procps is effectively a fork of a fork, for example

 - Craig
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Re: Is this really the debian way ?

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 07:13:59PM +, Roelof Wobben wrote:
 
 On the control file these packages are made: 
 cjs  - Mozilla-based javascript bindings for the GNOME platform
 libcjs0c - This is the shared library applications link to
 libcjs-dev - This package contains the development files applications need to
  build against.
That is very common. You have the programs people use in cjs. It has a
shared library or libraries in the lib package with the development
library parts (so other people can use it) in a -dev package.
That's pretty standard behaviour.

 DEB_DH_MAKESHLIBS_ARGS_libcjs0c = -Xusr/lib/cjs-1.0/ -V'libcjs0c (= 
 $(DEB_UPSTREAM_VERSION)), libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS)' -- -c4
 
 So they have to use some sort of hack to find the files of the second 
 package. 
That looks odd. Let's go through the args
  * Don't look for my libraries in /usr/lib/cjs-1.0
  * The -V option adds libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS) to the dependency, that looks
wrong.
Your library package creates the shlibs file so that other packages that
link to it have a sensible dependency. As an example, libprocps0 has:
  libprocps 0 libprocps0 (= 1:3.3.2-1)
while libprocps3 has:
  libprocps 3 libprocps3

So if something is built and linked with libprocps0 then it will have a
line in its control file like:
  Depends: libprocps0 (= 1:3.3.2-1), [other things here]
while if it was linked with libprocps3 it looks like:
  Depends: libprocps3, [other things here]

That odd -V option is saying, if you link with libcjs then you need to
also install either this or a newer version of libcjs (this is common)
but you ALSO need libcjs0-(something here) package.

That's very, very odd. shlibs is for finding library depdencies (I need
libary XYZ, which package is it in?) not for... well just a dependency
for dependency sake.

I suspect, but it is only a guess, that libcjs0 should depend on this
MOZJS thing.

HOWEVER, if you MUST have this, the way in debhelper rules would be:

override_dh_makeshlibs:
dh_makeshlibs -Xusr/lib/cjs-1.0/ -V'libcjs0c (= $(DEB_UPSTREAM_VERSION)), 
libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS)' -- -c4

What worries me is that if you need this MOZJS thing and you are not
making debian packages, then shlibs doesn't apply. If it is important
enough to do evil things to shlibs, then I suspect this theorectical
non-debian program wouldn't work.

 - Craig
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Re: Is this really the debian way ?

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 03:10:26PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
 On 2014-02-08, Roelof Wobben rwob...@hotmail.com wrote:
  DEB_DH_MAKESHLIBS_ARGS_libcjs0c = -Xusr/lib/cjs-1.0/ -V'libcjs0c (= 
  $(DEB_UPSTREAM_VERSION)), libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS)' -- -c4
 In this case, it ensures that anything that links libcjs0c ensures that
 it is installed along with the libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS) package.
That's the problem, it doesn't.

It ensures that any *Debian package* built this way will pull it in.
shlibs are only looked at at Debian package build time and is used to
assist in the generation of the Depends: line for that package being
built.

Assuming this LIBMOZJS thing is required for libcjs0 to work, then any
program compiled against libcjs0 that isn't a Debian package has the
potential to break.

If libcjs0 needs that LIBMOZJS package to work, then it should be a
dependency of libcjs0. It should not be some kludge using shlibs.

 - Craig
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Re: Is this really the debian way ?

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 12:14:17PM +, Roelof Wobben wrote:
 I know that cjs depends on mozjs185 package. 
 Is there a better way to make this work ? Without the hack ?
cjs the program or libcjs0? Whichever one, add a Dependency.
As you're running objdump over a library libcjs0 to find what version
of mozjs it uses, I guess it is for libcjs0.

That's another bad idea, objdump for the shlibs, fixed version for the
-dev package.  You can see over time these will diverge.

OK, its even wierder. The rules file has:
DEB_DH_MAKESHLIBS_ARGS_libcjs0c = -Xusr/lib/cjs-1.0/ -V'libcjs0c (=
$(DEB_UPSTREAM_VERSION)), libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS)'
and:
echo cjs:Provides=libcjs0-$(LIBMOZJS)  debian/$(cdbs_curpkg).substvars

So
  The rules file kludges shlibs so it depends in libcjs0 and
  libcjs0-mozjs185
and
  The package that provide libcjs0-mozjs185 is.. libcjs0

After all that mucking around you're back to depending on libcjs0 twice.
I'd try to find whoever wrote this and ask is it really needed and if
not nuke it.

It would only make sense if the mozjs package is also provided by
something else and in that case should be a dependency on libcjs0.

 - Craig
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Re: Moving a package (to non-free)

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Feb 01, 2014 at 05:19:12PM +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
   File /srv/ftp-master.debian.org/dak/dak/process_policy.py, line 136,
 in binary_component_func
 .join(Component).one()
   File /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/sqlalchemy/orm/query.py, line
 2193, in one
 Multiple rows were found for one())
 MultipleResultsFound: Multiple rows were found for one()
The program was expecting only one row but there was more than one
there in the database.  I personally don't like one() for this reason.

Checking the count and/or using first() is usually better, unless
this is pointing to something else breaking (e.g. the thing that let the
database have duplicate rows in the first place.)

 (assuming you haven't implemented it already)
Indeed.

Not really the uploaders fault though, to answer his question.

 - Craig
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Re: Restrictive Artwork License

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 02:19:38PM -0500, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:
 Even considering code in the same jarfile as linked, I don't think
 you can link an image to code in the same way.
I've seen it before. Takes an image and makes a C file, something like
char my_img={ 0x11, 0x22, ... etc}

Was evil, in so many ways.
Sounds like the graphics are non-free and the binary is contrib to me,
assuming they can be separated.  If the program could run without the
images then it could go in main.

 - Craig

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Bug#728716: RFS: xchroot/2.3.2-9 [ITP] -- Hi Debian!

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 05:19:31PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 The GNU GPL is the appropriate license here, please use it instead of
 contributing to license proliferation, as recommended by Debian's
 guide for upstreams:
As someone who has written Free Software for nearly 20 years, I
completely agree with what Paul is saying here.  For your general
requirements, the GPL seems to be the best fit.  Coincidently or perhaps
not, it is also the license most of the software I write uses.

The GPL effectively says, here is what you can do with my software, but
if you change or distribute it, you have to do the same too.  I know
its tempting to try to tweak licenses but so, so many people get it
wrong.  The problem is that we're usually better programmers than we are
laywers which is something I'm personally very happy about.

License choice is hard; even now (or two years ago) on new projects and
not ones I inherit it takes time. What is even harder than license
choice is license creation. Large companies have tried it and screwed it
up.

There is also the problem with code-sharing which if you use
something that isn't one of the common ones, code sharing starts to
become impossible. Alternatively I know right now any piece of GPL
licensed code from any project I can reuse on my GPL projects. I don't
even need to stop and think about it; it's just there. And the other way 
around, your project has a problem already solved in another GPL
project? You got the code already.

My strong suggestion to you is choose any one of the DFSG-free licenses.
A weaker suggestion is that the GPL will serve most of your goals.
As an author, you are absolutely free to choose any license for code 
you wrote, which is why they are only suggestions.

Doing this will free you from writing less legal blah and more C code 
(or whatever your language preference is). To me that's a win for
everyone.

 - Craig
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Re: dh_shlibdeps and non-standard library paths

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 03:44:11PM -0700, Daniel Farina wrote:
 I've been working on trying to hack up the packaging of PostGIS to try
 and cope better with multiple, simultaneously installed versions.  To
 that end, I am setting --prefix=/opt/postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 and
 stuffing most of the supporting libraries it generates in there.
I hope that's not for the actual packages but for some private package.

 dh_shlibdeps \
 -l/build/buildd/postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1-src-2.1.0/debian/tmp/opt/postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1/lib
Did you try -Lpostgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1
To me the -L option looks better for this sort of thing than the -l
hack.

Also on the command line dpkg-shlibdeps -v with the -S flag.


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Re: Include in PATH

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 09:51:52PM -0300, Beco wrote:
I'm creating a makefile with two installation rules.
One, the global installation, program with SGID and score in /var/games/
like some other games do.
The second one would install the program and scores under ~/.gamedir/A 
Global installation allow me to call the game directly because /usr/games
is in $PATH.
You have to decide at what point you want to make the decision between
global or user scores. At install time is a bad point. The two better
options are
 configure time
 run time
For configure time, use a ./configure option, say --enable-globalscores
compile with this on and it looks for scores in /var/games and the only
way to not use that is recompile. This is not as a big a limitation as
you first think.

The second way is at run time. You can make it an option or environment
variable or some configuration item. If you have to configure stuff in
the program already put it with that.

You could just try the global directory and if it fails use the local
directory.

Now, for the second installation process, what would be the best way to
include the game on PATH?
The game *binary* should be in the PATH, don't mess with the path to
find it. The game *score file* should be worked out by the binary. A
config item, ./configure option or environment variable.
Wether or not it is SGID, it is installed in the same spot.
As a package distributor you can ask the user if they want SGID, set is
a low priority and default to NO.

Would it be polite to do something like:
echo PATH=~./gamedir/:$PATH  ~/.profile
Uh no, you never do that. Have a sane default and let the user know how
to set it. PATH is where the binaries are, not score/config/data files.

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Re: dh_make and $DEBEMAIL

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 12:42:02AM -0300, Beco wrote:
  Its said in the man page that dh_make would use my $DEBEMAIL, but the
  email I see is another one (I suppose composed of login @ host-name ).
dh_make tries lots of things to get the right email address which is
why you are seeing that email. As you know now, setting the wrong
environment variable means it ignores it.

PS. Also, hijacking my own thread, I think there is a bug with the short
opt -c to set license. Is that so? Just the long option is working for
It was bug #684258 and was fixed in dh-make 0.62 in February.

Glad it seems, or almost seems, to be working for you now.

 - Craig (dh-make author)

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Re: optional package in Build-Depends (how?)

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 01:42:28PM +1100, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:
 Indeed it probably could be written as 
 
 Build-Depends: libgpm-dev [linux-any]
 
 But the obvious drawback would be the requirement to know all architectures
 where this package is available.
 In this case Build-Depends configuration will be ineffective against changes.
That's the problem I have with mudlet.
  libluajit-5.1-dev [amd64 armel i386 kfreebsd-i386],
  liblua5.1-0-dev [!amd64 !armel !i386 !kfreebsd-i386],

It's not pretty and basically means if other arches come along and
support libluajit I have to manually fix it.  I don't think I could use
or | because it didn't work on some build systems.

A or nothing would be handy but I always get worried that you will
miss linking because of a transistional bump then the program
behaviour changes.

Imagine if on the armel libluajit is not available temporarily. I think
its better to fail to build than to issue out a package without that
linking.

Specifically to your testing, valgrind testing should probably be
opportunistic, so test if valgrind is available and don't otherwise. I
think dejagnu does it that way.

 - Craig

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Re: Correct value for DEP5’s Format: field?

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 06:42:27PM +0100, Daniel Stender wrote:
 expected URL: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0
I've seen this url twice, including with the trailing slash.

However, it gives me a 404 from two Australian locations.
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/ shows no copyright-format
directory.

wget http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
--2012-01-09 14:01:38-- 
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
Resolving www.debian.org (www.debian.org)... 2001:388:1034:2900::26, 
150.203.164.38
Connecting to www.debian.org (www.debian.org)|2001:388:1034:2900::26|:80... 
connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2012-01-09 14:01:38 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Is this a mirror problem or a URL problem?  The IP is for gluck.

 - Craig (I never knew gluck was so close, it must be only 100s of
   metres from me as I type this)

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Re: dep5: Two licensing / One file

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 04:08:45PM +0100, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
 I am trying to use dep5 format to specify the license info of this
 file. How would one do ? Something like the following ?
It looks like BSD-4-Clause to me. This has it's own problems in itself.
Also, note that University of California have announced (in 1999) that
clause 3 is no longer required[1]. SPDX also has some information about
it but it's notes are unhelpful[2]

I believe that means the second one could be BSD-3-Clause then.
The first isn't BSD, it's BSD-ish.  I could not find anything that
matched it directly.  This was the problem back then, people made up
their own variations which meant some things were unclear.

So to me, the simple answer is that you don't have a standard license so
the short name is not a standard tag, make something that looks ok and
put the entire two sets underneath.

 - Craig

[1] ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change
[2] http://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause
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Re: dh --parallel (was: Re: RFS: lebiniou)

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:06:54AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:47 AM, Joey Hess wrote:
 
  Only after reading debhelper's bug logs where the decision was
  researched and made to not --parallel by default, please.
 
 I was not able to find such a bug, could you point it out please?
532805 perhaps? dh_auto_build: prevents make jobs from being run
simultaneously

It's certainly a fascinating (for me) read anyhow. 

 - Craig

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Re: RFS: kildclient (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 06:28:58PM -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for my package kildclient.
I'll upload it for you.

 - Craig
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Re: New Backup Application

[Craig Small]

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 10:47:34AM +1200, Paul Reddy wrote:
 I've built a reasonably comprehensive backup and disaster recovery app, and 
 am looking for some help on the next steps, the first of which I believe is 
 to find a mentor/sponsor from this group.
Hello Paul,
  This does sound interesting but you probably should of put up a
website or some more information about the program.  Have you found
someone to sponsor you yet?

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: kildclient (updated packages, fixes FTBS)

[Craig Small]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 05:56:23PM -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
 Anyway, if some DD is thinking about uploading this package, please
 wait. I've submitted a quick fix for the FTBS bug 555000 to Dominic
 Hargreaves as per his offer in that bug report, so I'll prepare a new
 version soon.
I'm a DD and work on a competitor to kildclient (mudlet) but we're all
one big happy FOSS family here so when you get it sorted out let me
know.

Also, have you read the email regarding the perl transistion as
kildclient uses perl? It might be worthwhile waiting for that to settle
down first.

 pkg-config files for gtk+ will not list so many libraries as
 dependencies (that aren't really dependencies)?
There doesn't seem to be a simple fix for gtk's dependency bloat.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: ax-emergency-listen

[Craig Small]

On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 11:45:11AM +0200, Fabrizio Regalli wrote:
  - Missing copyright and license information: config.h, listen.h lack both of
them and ax25dump.c, kissdump.c, utils.c don't have any license 
  information.
As such, they are not distributable.
 
 I need to talk with the author for try to solve this issue.
They sound the like files out of the listen program in ax25-utils.

 - Craig
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Re: What to do about the situation with id3v2

[Craig Small]

Hello Stefan,
 As someone who has been in your situation many times (I look after more
orphans than an animal shelter) you do need to think about the longer
term. I took over psmisc in 2000, for example.

I saw some suggested you make the library a basic shim to the currently
developed one and that's probably a good compromise if it doesn't look
like too much work.  The ideal would be for programs to use a supported
library.  I would say that the library change would be about the same
effort as the command-line one but there's more ongoing support.

It's the ongoing work that you need to consider.  Also I wonder how
many of the other programs know the id3 library state.  I was actually
looking for an id3 tagger for a program of mine and wasn't aware.

 - Craig
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Re: override_dh_auto_configure not called

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 10:04:37AM +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
 %:
   dh --parallel --with quilt --buildsystem=cmake $@
and
 dpkg-source: info: using source format `3.0 (quilt)'
look wrong as 3.0 (quilt) does the patching work for you.
Also the $@ is right after dh not after your options.


 override_dh_auto_configure:
   dh_auto_configure -- -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Release
 -DCMAKE_SKIP_RPATH:BOOL=ON
This is a little circular, you probably should replace it with
override_dh_auto_configure:
./configure -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Release -DCMAKE_SKIP_RPATH:BOOL=ON
I'm not sure if you use configure or something else here.

The build targets look fine.

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Re: Re: installing an end user editable file

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 06:24:06PM +, james frize wrote:
 I'm looking at installing the links.txt file to
 ~/.packagename/links.txt, but I don't seem to be able to use the
 ~wildcard.
Is this in  rules file? If so you cannot do that at all.  It doesn't
make any sense for a package to install a file in the users home
directory.

Generally there is a /etc/package/whatever file for defaults and any
user specific files would be in /usr/share/doc/package/examples
The file in examples should really tell people what to do, e.g.:

# This is an example file for whatever, you can copy this to
# ~/.whatever/myfile

There are many problems with getting a package installer to install
files in a user's home directory. Perhaps the first one I can think of
is, which user's directory?

 - Craig
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Re: warning: patches have not been applied, applying them now (use --no-preparation to override)

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 12:29:22PM +0100, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
   However the build failure is still there. What I do not understand
 is that the debian-changes-3.6.0-1 patch is generated on the fly by
 dpkg, therefore I cannot remove it (quilt pop):
A rough rule of thumb is if you get a debian-changes file and you
weren't expecting it, you're doing something wrong. The hard bit is
working out what the something wrong is.

/usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/README.Debian.gz is a good file to read
for starters.  It sounds like you have old config.* files and are
updating them. That's a good start!

The clean target can delete or rebuild the config.* files and perhaps
even run autogen.sh

For the patching problem, you can ignore the changes because your script
is going to nuke the files anyhow. It's explained pretty well at
Raphael's blog entry at:

http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/01/28/3-ways-to-not-clutter-your-debian-source-package-with-autogenerated-files/

Just under A new way to avoid the problem

I use this feature in pidgin-musictracker because upstream always
forgets to regenerate his po files so my diff would be filled with
useless updates.

 - Craig
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Re: DEP5 and multiple copyrights for same file

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:27:41PM +0100, Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals 
(RainCT) wrote:
 For extra points, make the first one:
 
 License: GPL-2
  See /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.
I believe it needs the full GPL-2 excerpt just like a normal copyright
file has got.

 - Craig
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Re: Time of a package to be processed by FTP-masters

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 07:31:56PM +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
 Why is this important?  In this lapse of time of 2 months, my package (1.7.1 
 version) was already obsoleted (by 1.7.2, with a lot of bug fixes).  So I 
 was wondering if it's worth to invest time in creating a package for 1.7.2, 
 or if the effort might be futile because the package won't be reviewed and 
 approved under any circumstance until freeze is over.  By that time 1.7.3 
 might be out, and my effort wasted again, so I would choose not to create 
 the 1.7.2 package at this moment.
Freeze is a trying time for lots of bits of Debian and definitely for
the ftp masters.  The problem is your question about when they can look
at your package revolves around when with the next version of Debian be
released, and we all know the answer to that is when it's ready.

If there is no real changes between the versions, I'd wait until the
one sitting in the queue has made it through.  If it is something
important I'd update the pending package.

It can be frustrating because you've done all this work and then..
nothing, but look on the bright side; you're not one of those poor ftp
masters!

 - Craig

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Re: RFS: php-net-smtp (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 10:28:21PM +0100, Guillaume Delacour wrote:
 So the only version to consider is 1.4.2-3 ot fix the grave bug, thanks
 in advance if you could take time to review and sponsor it (I've cc'ed
 Thomas because he wanted sponsor it as soon as possible).
It has an older standards version.

 - Craig



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Re: RFS: php-net-smtp (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 07:07:40PM +0100, Guillaume Delacour wrote:
 Yes, RT and Thomas said me to not upgrade Standards-Version to 3.9.1 to
 not introduce any other changes in the package. If needed, i could
 upgrade the package and had some minor improvments.
Ah ok, that makes sense now. It's been uploaded.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: php-net-smtp (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 07:15:03PM +0100, Guillaume Delacour wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for the new version 1.4.4-1
 of my package php-net-smtp.
mentors has 1.4.2-3 on it, not 1.4.4-1.
I'll sponsor it but sort out the versions first.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: php-log (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 07:13:00PM +0100, Guillaume Delacour wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for the new version 1.12.3-1
 of my package php-log.
I've had a look at it and it all looks fine to upload so I'll sponsor
this one.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: notorious-women

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 09:17:52AM +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
 
 Bilal Akhtar wrote:
  Just take the case of my package gnome-media-player. I submitted the RFS
  two months ago, and got a large number of replies, everyone saying How
  can you use this package name? It is *not* the official GNOME's Media
  Player (Totem Is) and so you should change the package name. No one ever
Seems like an extremely sensible decision to me.

 I find funny how the it is in Ubuntu, it must be good argument is used so 
 often. The fact that Ubuntu accepted that package with said name doesn't 
 necessarily make it good or suitable as-is for Debian. Different distros, 
 different policies and different people.
I get that too.  Sometimes it is valid, sometimes it is the equivalent
of small children saying well all my friends are doing it why can't I?
i.e. the only argument for it is someone somewhere didn't object to it.

I've seen some really bad patches go into Ubuntu, for example. This
doesn't mean the entire distribution is terrible or all Unbuntu-specific
patches are bad, but I would advise you check them yourself first.

Getting back on topic, the name isn't too bad, though I do agree a name
like fortunes-fr-*whatever* or fortunes-*whatever*-fr would be better,
assuming that it is a fortune file and the quotes are in french, as
opposed to french women quoted in english.

I also read that someone said notorious is the same as famous people.  I while
strictly speaking they may be definied the same, for most english
speakers it means in a negative way.  Someone who is a well-known
criminal would be notorious.  A famous person who saves lives of others
probably is not. A grey area is where the person is famous, but
notorious for saying socially iffy quotes.

 - Craig

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Re: A lot of pending packages

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 10:44:00PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
 On 2010-06-09, Lorenzo De Liso blackz...@gmail.com wrote:
  I'm a simple debian contributor: I'm trying to get my work in debian
  through a sponsor [1] [2]. The problem is that I'm waiting for a sponsor
  since 7 days+ (and not only me, in mentors.debian.net there are 20+
  pending packages) [3]. Why are they in pending status and nobody wants
  to upload them? I know, we all are busy with the real life things, but a
 
 When I'm sponsoring packages, which happens from time to time, it is
 normally packages that I somehow have a interest in.
 I think that many other sponsors feel it the same way.
That's exactly how I work when sponsoring packages.  I look after 7 of
them and all 7 have a reason for being there. There is only 9 packages
that are asking for sponsors.

 For example, my interests is mostly around KDE, and I really try to
 avoid python stuff. That kind of rules your two packages out for me.
Whereas for me that would be my worst nightmare. A gui toolkit I don't
use and haven't got install and a language I don't understand.  However,
the variety of interests and skills is a good thing.

What Sune said is pretty good advice, you may also be able to ask people
who look after similiar packages.  I sponsored purple-plugin-pack
because I maintaint pidgin-musictracker.

 - Craig

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Re: About package with potential legal risk

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 10:04:36AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
 Rather, I think Noel is saying that replacing them quickly, with any
 freely-licensed functional images (even ugly ones), is best. Once
 freely-licensed replacement images are working, other people can suggest
 improvements and do the work of making better images if needed.

There used to be a website where Free Software projects could ask for
icons.  The tree icon for pstree in the psmisc package came from there,
for example.  Unfortunately it appears to have gone.

It's a shame really, as I'm sure there would be some graphically
talented people out there that wouldn't mind drawing icons etc for a
project every now and then, but there doesn't seem a way to find them.

procps (See bug #192635) has wanted a menu icon since 2003.

 - Craig
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Re: Using dbconfig-common in maintainer scripts.

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 08:31:01AM +1000, Nikolai Lusan wrote:
 What happens is that debconf asks the questions (not all the questions I
 would like),
Not asking all the questions sounds like a dpkg-configure priority
level.

 the entries in /etc/dbconfig-common/postfix-cluebringer are all 
 empty strings.
Even the first one dbc_install ?
If dbc_install is anything but true then most if not all of the
subsequent lines will be false.

 dbc_generate_include=template:/etc/cluebringer/cluebringer.conf
 dbc_generate_include_perms=660
 dbc_generate_include_owner=root:www-data
 dbc_generate_include_args=-o 
 template_infile=/usr/share/doc/postfix-cluebringer/templates/cluebringer.conf 
 -U
OK, so you're using the templates. I've only used the db_get strings but
that generally looks like a better way.

If I have problems with my postinst, I generally make a verbose postinst
script that blurts out everything it is doing etc. It's often found
what I'm missing.

 these packages don't rely on postfix-cluebringer I would like to be able
 to access the debconf/dbconfig-common database entries for
 postfix-cluebringer (if it is installed) to optionally configure them
 automagically for the user. Is this possible?
Did you try making a dummy package and using
db_get postfix-cluebringer/myvariable

 While debugging the postinst script I also noticed a whole lot of
 variables not mentioned in any documentation or example being used by
 dbconfig-common and I was wondering if any of these are usable in the
 config/postinst script (for forcing debconf to ask specific questions
If its not documented then you might, but then the maintainer might
change the name/function of that variable too.  I'd not depend on these.
They're shell scripts, so not exactly great at information hiding.

 - Craig

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Re: what it's like to be old debian maintainer

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 03:04:13AM +0100, J??r??my Lal wrote:
 i'm wondering what happens when you spent hours and
 years dealing with debian... is it something you don't regreat ?

I was wondering if you meant someone who is old who is a Debian
maintainer or someone who has been involved in Debian for a long time.

I've been working in the Debian project for over 13 years. While there
have been highs and lows I don't regret the time.

 I'm in the learning curve and it's still very interesting,
Debian is evolving. It gets better and generally learns from its
mistakes.  A good example of that is the glibc/libc transistions but
there is so much going on now. 

You'll get better too usually after making some mistakes 
(In 1997, I once installed /bin/ps as /bin; hopefully noone remembers that)

I've been playing around with computer and programming since the very 
early 80s and writing free software since 1994 and I'm still learning
new things.

So don't worry about running out of new things to see and do in Debian.

 - Craig
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Re: FS: tacacs+ (updated package)

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 04:38:23PM +0100, Tourneur Henry-Nicolas wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for my package tacacs+.

I've sponsored and uploaded this package.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: tacacs+

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 06:30:26PM +0100, Tourneur Henry-Nicolas wrote:
 I just did so and normally, I should have fixed all of the lintian Errors and 
 Warnings. Could somebody review my package again ?
 
 Thanks everybody for taking time to help me.
I was wondering why you have put the binaries into /usr/bin and not
/usr/sbin. Both are not programs standard users run.
  tac_plus is the TACACS+ daemon and has a man page in section 8
  tac_pwd is used by system administrators to make DES passwords to put 
into the configuration file. Again it has a section 8 man pages.

To me this sort of stuff belongs in /usr/sbin.

 - Craig

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Re: RFS: tacacs+

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 09:54:20PM +0100, Tourneur Henry-Nicolas wrote:
 I did upload a new version of the package, which should fix most of those 
 issue.
I'll have a look at it.

 1° I didn't manage to get #1 fixed, I guess I should use dh_clean or dh_prep 
 but I don't know how to.
I'll look at your package to see what you haven't cleaned up, but
if you are using dh_clean you can add a file debian/clean and put
the files you want delted in there. Alternatively in the clean
target delete the file.

 2° Which version of lintian do you use to get those warnings and errors ? I 
 got an updated sid version of lintian but no messages :( I guess I fixed #2, 
 #3 
 and 4 but it's just based on your description of the problem (thanks for 
 that).
This is how I got those messages, this is for your older package:
csm...@elmo:~/debian/tacacs$ lintian tacacs+_4.0.4.19-1_amd64.changes
W: tacacs+ source: patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff users_guide
W: tacacs+ source: out-of-date-standards-version 3.7.3 (current is
3.8.4)
E: tacacs+: duplicate-updaterc.d-calls-in-postinst tacacs_plus
E: tacacs+: duplicate-updaterc.d-calls-in-postrm tacacs_plus
N: 2 tags overridden (2 warnings)
csm...@elmo:~/debian/tacacs$ lintian -V
Lintian v2.3.3

The trick is to run lintian on the changes file, as it does both source
and binary package checking, otherwise it only does source (.dsc) or 
binary (.deb)

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: tacacs+

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 11:08:37PM +0100, Tourneur Henry-Nicolas wrote:
 * License : No license, only a copyright file
If there was no license, then you couldn't distribute it.  The license
is what is in the COPYING file which is very MIT-like. I'm pretty sure
it's ok.

 The package is almost lintian clean, only one small warning about some 
 patches 
 issue but I don't fully understand the tag description, could you help me ?
I get 4 lintian messages.

W: tacacs+ source: patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff users_guide
W: tacacs+ source: out-of-date-standards-version 3.7.3 (current is
3.8.4)
E: tacacs+: duplicate-updaterc.d-calls-in-postinst tacacs_plus
E: tacacs+: duplicate-updaterc.d-calls-in-postrm tacacs_plus

#1 - You are using dpatch patch system, but you have difference in your
source files that are not in dpatch. It looks like you are not deleting
generated files, such as users_guide and the debhelper log files.

#2 - change the standards line to 3.8.4 in debian/control. 
#3 and #4 are the same thing - You have duplicated the automatically
added sections. Delete debian/postinst, debian/prerm as they are fully
autocally added files.
For debian/postrm just get the purge entry to delete your log directory.

 About the license, I guess we should check that everything is fine but what 
 the 
 copyright file mainly says is that we are free to copy/use/modify/distribute 
 the source as we like so that looks fine it think :)
The copyright (ie who wrote it) has changed a bit, but the license (ie
how you use it) has not. It would be nice to have that confirmed.

Also your single dbpatch has an author of root@, you probably want to
fix that.

 - Craig

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Re: dh_installinit: what to do if upstream provides a initscript?

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 02:56:56PM +0100, Darshaka Pathirana wrote:
 ,
 |-o, --onlyscripts
 |Only modify postinst/postrm/prerm scripts, do not actually 
 install
 |any init script or default files. May be useful if the init 
 script
 |is shipped and/or installed by upstream in a way that doesn’t 
 make
 |it easy to let dh_installinit find it.
 `
 
 Must have had not enough sleep and/or not enough coffee. ;)
I'll put that into the newmaint guide, it's a small enough thing but
could catch people.

 - Craig
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Re: no explicit license on upstream

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 03:39:51PM +0100, Gabriele Giacone wrote:
 My question is about licenses: dependencies have been licensed well
 otherwise they would not be in Debian but ispy directory and ispy
 website resources don't explicitly refer to a specific license.
 Should upstream create a LICENSE file? Or a manifest/disclaimer on
 download page would be better? Or 1 and 2?
Unfortunately without any sort of license file or some sort of note or
anything at all then the program is unlicensed.  A license generally
means something permitting you to do something you normally cannot. So
no license means no permission.

Now that's probably not the intention of the writers of the software but
that is unfortunately the outcome of the program as it stands. 

The world is filled with programs that are not-quite-rightly licensed.
One of the nice things with Debian is we try to fix it, when possible.
This isn't changing the minds of the upstream developers, but just
getting them to be a bit more explicit about what they were thinking.

My suggestion is if they want to choose a license, any license, then use
one that most other software like it uses, and failing that use GPL. I
personally started using that for my software in 1994 and don't regret
it. However, if they have a preference for it, BSD is pretty good too.

 - Craig
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Re: How to write emacs dependency ?

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 06:51:01PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
 On 2009-11-11 16:43 +0100, Christoph Egger wrote:
  Depends: emacs21 | emacs22 | emacs23 | xemacs21,
gnus | emacs22 | emacs23 | xemacs21
 
 This does not give you any guarantee that somebody trying to run darcsum
 on emacs21 has the gnus package installed.
It does, let's say you have emacs21 installed but not gnus.
The first clause matches emacs21, so its satisfied.
The second, nothing matches, so you have an unmet dependency.
For instances off emacs22, emacs23 and xemacs21 then whatever is
installed meets both clauses.

 How about simply dropping support for emacs21?  It's an obsolete Emacs
 flavor version that has been removed from sid already.
That is possibly the better idea in that case.

 - Craig
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Re: problem sign .changes

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 12:38:07AM +0200, Jaromír Mike? wrote:
 how-to sign .dsc and .changes files?
debsign file.changes

 I tried $ debsing -sgpg file.changes
 and have error: secret key not available
gpg is the default.

 I already generated my key by  $gpg --gen-key command.
do you have ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg ?

 - Craig
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Re: Building localy

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 09:23:24PM +0100, Jaromír Mike? wrote:
 dh_clean -k 
 Undefined subroutine Getopt::Long::GetOptionsFromArray called at 
 /usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper/Dh_Getopt.pm line 76.
 make: *** [install] Error 255

It's not your rules, it looks like your perl is missing a module or you
are using an old perl.

It should also fail on the command line if you type dh_clean

 - Craig
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Re: Need to debianize again?

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 06:13:40PM +0100, tombs wrote:
 I'm trying to work with a package that was already debianized before. But
 nothing more than that.
The first question to ask is, is the packaging done by the previous
maintainer ok?  If it is more or less what you want that's a different
situation to a bunch of debian files that are wrong.

If I was happy about how the package was, then just edit the control and
changelogs and off you go.

Also a rough rule of thumb is that upstream debian files are wrong.
That's a gross generalisation but one I'd start with (ie treat the
upstream debian files with caution)

 - Craig
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Re: debian/rules

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 05:10:38AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
 On Mar 11 2009, Jaromír Mike?? wrote:
  # Add here commands to clean up after the build process.
  -$(MAKE) -C source/ PREFIX=/usr clean
 
 Hummm, here you should also make sure that you don't ignore errors from
 make (see the hyphen that was put there). Are current versions of
 dh_make producing such templates?
Reported in bug 432667 and fixed in dh-make 0.45 which was released
May 2008.

Offtopic perhaps, but I'm working on the next release of dh-make which
looks like extra features rather than bug-fixing.

 Some upstream have unusual ways of doing things indeed. :-)
You can say that again!

 - Craig
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Re: FLOSS universities??

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 05:19:03PM -0700, Tom D. Davidson wrote:
 Please forgive me if this is inappropriate for this list.
It is one of those which email list should this go to problems.

 I have a one shot opportunity to return to school and am after a Software
 Engineering degree or a project based Computer Science program the focuses
 on FLOSS tools and methodologies.
It would be good if you could find it, but if not do not despair.
Surely the theoretical and abstract part of software engineering could
apply for FLOSS or non-FLOSS.  Even some low-level stuff crosses over; C
is still C even if you have to use that infernal visual thing.

A good solid start to me would be more important. When I was at uni
FLOSS wasn't even really an idea, hell even Linux was radical, but my
undergraduate thesis was the first two pieces of Free Software I wrote.
If you want it too, it has a way of sneaking in.

Good luck on your search and studies!

 - Craig
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Re: Patching Upstream Source

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 02:49:31AM -0600, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
 Can changes need to be made to files provided by upstream, e.g. a 
 Debian-specific patch or a patch not yet integrated upstream, be done in 
 the .diff.gz and be compliant with Standards-Version 3.8.0?  Or, do they 
 need to be done as part of the patch target in debian/rules, e.g. via 
 dpatch?
I believe either are fine, as far as policy is concerned.  However
unless you have trivial patches you will find using dpatch makes life so
much easier.

I used to just use the old diff.gz way (hey, it was the only way then)
and switched to using dpatch. Now I only ever use dpatch. It is a lot
easier to handle the patches that way.  The dpatch files are still in
the diff.gz anyhow.

  - Craig
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Re: hi from argentina, info about complex package

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:54:23AM -0200, David Damian Faerman wrote:
 I am new in this list, I have read a lot about make a simple package but
 I can't find any info about the other package types...  (multiple
 binary, library, kernel module).
Those sound like the dh_make types that it asks you about if you don't
specify on the command line, except simple is single.

I always recommend you try to make a single package first. There is
enough to learn about that for starters.  Debian packages are generally
more difficult to build than others, but you get a much better result in
the end.

The order you list them is probably the order from less to more
complicated.

 - Craig
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Re: Library Packaging

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 09:44:44PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
 Generally, I don't recommend that anyone on this list seriously
 considers packaging shared libraries until they have a couple of
 ordinary binary packages in the archive. 
I would agree with that.  Debian packaging is quite daunting for someone
who's not seen it before, let alone packaging a library. Some upstream
Makefiles are packager-friendly and others it looks like they go out of
their way to make life tough.

dh-make helps, but it cannot cater for everything.  Another problem with
your email is you don't actually say what is going wrong.

 - Craig
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Re: 'cdarch' has a dash version

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 10:28:02PM +0200, Jann Horn wrote:
 I uploaded a package, but it causes the following message:
 
 Your package does not seem to be lintian clean.
 'lintian' is a tool to verify if source package contain obvious
 packaging errors. These warnings/errors were found:
 W: cdarch source: native-package-with-dash-version
Is cdarch truly a native package?  If so, why did they use a dash in the
version string.

  - Craig

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Re: dh_make

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 02:27:06PM +0200, Alessio Giovanni Baroni wrote:
 always I am. In drqueue (0.64.3, last) there is also a python interface.
 The actual package (drqueue-0.60.0-1.deb) have not this interface.
 I must to include it? And if yes, in dh_make can I to select multiple
 binaries?
dh_make won't help you there, as this situation is a little unsual and
dh_make can only cater for usual cases.  A few more lines in the control
file and some work with dh_install should do it.

 - Craig

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Re: New debhelper tool proposal

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 05:42:32PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 12:08 AM, Luca Bruno [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  What I suggest is a tool that does the following stuff after dh_make has 
  been called:
 
 Why not add these smarts to dh_make itself?
Some of them don't look like they should be done at dh_make run time.
If they (the ones that should be done at the dh_make run time) can be
split out and put into a bug I can have a look at them.

 - Craig
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Re: A simply project to read

[Craig Small]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:36:41AM +0200, Alexandre González wrote:
 I'm searching for a simple project to read the code. I download the code of
 a lot of programs, but I don't know how start, a lot of archives and a lot
 of unreadable (for me) code. Any suggestion?

The package hello might be a good start.
Also, look for some package that is close to the sort of thing you are
interested in and look at a few there.  All packages in main have to
have their source code available so you have plenty to choose from.

 - Craig
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Re: Easiest way to Debianise a package?

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 06:00:41PM +0200, Ivan Vucica wrote:
 1. What are your recommendations with regards to what to use to
 perform initial debianisation of the project? Meaning - what should I
 use? Just debhelper? CDBS?
I'd use dh-make, but I'm obviously biased in that regard.  I didn't like
CDBS myself.

 2. Should data files be produced by same debianisation directory (by
 which I mean folder containing files copyright, rules, etc)?
Depending on the relative sizes, data files should probably go in their
own package. copyright goes into ALL Debian binary packages. rules files
are required by all Debian source packages.

 3. Should source file generated by autotools contain the data files?
 Will that make debianisation any easier?
Generally make dist will create the Makefile.in and configure files
but not the Makefile itself.  Whatever make dist does should be good
enough.

 4. In case my questions are wrong:
 What would be your steps for producing packages project and
 project-data, considering what I mentioned above and directory
 structure below?
I'd have a debian/project-data.files file and use dh_movefiles

 What would be your desires for upstream -- what should upstream do to
 make your life easier?
Use autotools correctly (difficult and I'm usually the upstream!)
Don't put undistributable files in the source package.
Don't muck up the copyrights of various files, for example a mixture
of files with conflicting copyrights.
Don't mandatorily link to something not in Debian and that could not
ever be in Debian.
The autotools usually take care of it, but make sure its easy to shift
the destination of the install target. For example you don't want
make install to install something in /bin with no way of changing it
with either a PREFIX or DESTDIR option.

 What would you do after fetching SVN (not tar.gz) that contains data
 as below, and whose make dist would generate .tar.gz containing just
 sources?
There are some tools to make things easier, I'd just download the svn
and make dist.

 - Craig
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FTP excuses for lprng dont make sense to me

[Craig Small]

Hello,
  I'm trying to work out what is going on with the lprng package.
Specifically why it is not getting into testing.

The excuses file says:

# lprng (- to 3.8.A~rc4-1)

* Maintainer: Craig Small
* 11 days old (needed 10 days)
* Ignoring high urgency setting for NEW package
* out of date on hppa: lprng (from 3.8.A~rc2-1)
* out of date on armel: lprng (from 3.8.A~rc2-1) (but armel isn't
* keeping up, so nevermind)
* lprng (source, i386, alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, ia64, mips, mipsel,
* powerpc, s390, sparc, armel) has new bugs!
* Updating lprng introduces new bugs: #462605
* Not considered 

It looks like HPPA and Armel just take their sweet time so its not a
build problem, but a taking too long to get up-to-date problem.

Now, where is my previous version (3.8.A~rc2-1) gone? It's not like
lprng is new, its years old! since 1996.

Bug 462605 was fixed, not introduced, in 3.8.A~rc4-1.

So, what's going on here?

 - Craig

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Re: Config files which are writable by www-data

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2008 at 01:20:14PM +0100, Roland Gruber wrote:
 but when I copy the files at install time (postinst) then /usr/share/doc
 should be no problem? If the administrator deletes the files in
 /usr/share/doc afterwards then my application will have no problems.
I got a similiar situation.
If the program is going to read-in the files, even as templates, put
them into /usr/share/packaganame

If they are just examples and the admin can copy and edit them then
/usr/share/doc/packagename/examples is where they should go.

 - Craig
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Re: How to set BTS tags nicely

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 02:47:10PM +0100, David Paleino wrote:
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I do the same except BCC so if anyone replies they don't spammed by
the BTS complaining about their reply being commands it doesn't
understand.

 - Craig
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Re: Re: how to dh_install exclude filename ?

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 12:08:02AM -0200, Andre Felipe Machado wrote:
 many thanks for your suggestions.
 Unfortunately, it did not work as expected.
 Reading the debian/rules file [0] you could see that it is the binary
 target in a multibinary rules file.
 
 It seems that the --exclude argument is simply ignored.
That does appear to be strange, I have used the -X or --exclude option
for dh_install and it did what it was told. Perhaps you are using
include then excludes and it just getting confused?

Could you create a manifest file and just use that?

 - Craig
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Re: updating the patches

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 08:42:55PM -0500, Kamaraju S Kusumanchi wrote:
 I have a very naive question. I am involved in maintaining texmacs package.
I thought it was a good question myself, not naive at all!

 dptach. The files involved in these patches have been altered upstream in
 the latest version 1.0.6.12 (Debian Sid currently has 1.0.6.11). So the old
 patches no longer apply. What is the most efficient way in this scenario?
I think it would depend on how much the files have altered, or rather
how big and nasty the .rej file is.

If it doesn't look too bad, then I would use dpatch-edit-patch to
apply the patch and work on that version of the files to fix the
problems up. Once you are happy, exit out of the subshell and you have a
new patch.

If it is patching very messily, then you may want to move the patch out
of the way, use dpatch-edit-patch again (but it won't apply the moved
patch) and then manually make the changes using the moved patch as your
guide.

You don't mention what the patches are for, but it is a good idea
to consider if you require them anymore. For example you may of had
a work-around for some bug and the upstream has put a proper fix in,
so its not required.

As an aside, dpatch is pretty neat little program that has defintely
solved the majority of headaches for patching, though not all. Certainly
better than the bad old days :)

 - Craig

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Re: How much free must a package be to be included in non-free (was: Re: CC by-SA 3.0 is DFSG-free?)

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 10:43:05PM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote:
 Can anybody explain how packages go into non-free? I mean: how much free
 the package has to be to be considered to non-free and which issues are
 blocker that would forbid the package into entering non-free?
You/we have to be able to legally distribute it. A binary-only
distribution agreement may mean it can go in non-free, but a binary-only
agreement which says you must download it from a specific website could
not (but you could make a contrib installer in that case).

I only recall acrobat, or rather the installer for the reader, being in 
contrib.

The problem is that non-free can be there for many reasons.  Most of the
licenses used in those packages are just plain awful and probably more
restrictive than intended.  That's why working out if a package can go
into non-free, or cannot be distributed at all, is often very hard. I'd
say it is harder to do than the main/non-free decision.

 - Craig

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Re: dependancy question?

[Craig Small]

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 10:18:11PM -0500, Paul Elliott wrote:
 Build-Depends: debhelper (= 4.0.0), autotools-dev, libboost-dev, 
 libboost-dev, libboost-regex-dev, libgconfmm-2.6-dev, libgtkmm-2.4-dev, 
 libsigc++-2.0-dev, libboost-filesystem-dev (= 1.33.1 ) libboost-regex-dev 
 (= 1.33.1 )
Why have two libboost-dev?
Also there is a libbost-regex-dev , one with a version and one without


 Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a, 
 libgconfmm-2.6-1c2, libsigc++-2.0-0c2a, libboost-filesystem1.33.1, 
 libboost-regex1.33.1
Unless you are doing strange things, this is wrong. Let the shlibdeps
work this out for you.

The problem can be that while a package, with a recompile, will work
absolutely fine with libfoo version 0.1 and 0.2, as they have the same
API, there may be some dynamic linking problems.  Hard coding the
library dependencies is almost always a bad idea and will bite you in
the end.

 I would like to say that peless depends on boost, libgtkmm 2.4, libgconfmm 
 2.6, and libsigc++ 2.0
 without being so specific about the versions. But there appears to be no way 
 to
 do this, the versions seem to be built into the package names!
dpkg-shlibdeps will work out the right things for you, in the case of
abinary requiring a specific library and that's the way it should be
done.

Generally try it without specifying the libraries and see if it looks
ok. Have a look in debian/peless/DEBIAN/config too and see if that finds
your dependencies.

 - Craig

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Re: manpage tools

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 05:01:56PM +0200, Magnus Holmgren wrote:
 What tools do you prefer for writing manpages (e.g. for commands that lack 
 one 
 from upstream)?
cp and vim

OK, not very sophisticated I know but I can bang out a man page pretty
quickly this way.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: smarty

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 10:41:25PM +0300, Thierry Randrianiriana wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for the new version 2.6.18-1
 of my package smarty.

Found one yet? If not I'll do this and the -doc

 - Craig
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Re: Bad practice to make a package depend on a specific kernel image

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 01:40:47PM -0500, Jerry DuVal wrote:
 Is it bad practice to make a package depend on a specific kernel image?
 This might be a loaded question, but I was just trying to get an opinion.
 All of the boxes using this package are of the same configuration.

Generally speaking, yes it is bad practice. kernel modules packages do,
but they are tightly coupled to the kernel (could be considered part of
it), so it is ok.

Probably for anything else it is a case of bad programming. At the very
least they should try to run, notice the missing feature because the 
kernel is less than version X and gracefully exit.

We live in a strange world though, there is probably some other rare
reasons why you could depend on a specific version.

 - Craig

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Re: question about reporting bugs on my own package

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 07:48:08AM -0700, tony mancill wrote:
 This is up to you; I've done it both ways in the past.  If the bug is
 affects the usability of the package, and it could take a while to fix it,
 go ahead and report the bug to the BTS.  That will let other users know that
 the maintainer is aware of the issue.  You may even be able to describe a
 workaround in the bug report.  If the bug is trivial or purely aesthetic
 then the bug report would be less useful.  However, it doesn't hurt to file
 a bug report, even if the issue is very minor, so if you're in doubt, I
 would suggest filing one.

I would have to second what Tony says above.  I maintain packages as a
Debian developer and as upstream and yes while there is no rule about it
Tony's description is a pretty good way of determining what you can do.

Another way of looking at it is; would the bug report be useful to users
of your package. This could be either because they know it is not just
their system, because you have put in a work-around or so that they know
Debian/upstream is aware of it.

 - Craig

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Re: header sanity check?

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 09:05:28PM -0700, Tyler MacDonald wrote:
 So it's really easy to package a -dev package with a header file, that
 #include's a header file in a package that it doesn't depend on.
Yes it is, it's a compile time problem of someones program.

 to catch this or if there are any requirements. pbuilder won't even catch it
 if the Build-Depends for the source package contains all the -dev packages
 needed.
If that particular header file is not used in the compiling then it
cannot be caught, as it doesn't result in an error.

It is not as easy as it sounds.  We have enough trouble with libraries
(it's a similiar sort of issue). Consider if you include stdio.h
You need to depend on libc6-dev right?
Until libc7 comes along, then you're in trouble.

Also a lot of headers have things like #ifdef HAVE_FOO_H and only
include foo.h if you have it. Lot's of portable autoconf'ed stuff does
it like that.

Or perhaps parts of the headers only activate under certain circumstances.
A program that could use mysql or postgresql databases, for example, may
need some of their headers if you use that feature.

It would be nice to trap all sorts of problems, but I believe this would 
create more than it would solve.

 - Craig

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Re: COPYING says GPL, but all headers say LGPL

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 09:07:18AM +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:
 On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 01:12:10PM +1000, Craig Small wrote:
  On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 11:02:01AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
 It appears that, although the COPYING file and the website
   claim that TreeView X is GPL, all the source files have Library GPL
   headers (except the Nexus ones of course). Technically, what is the
   licence of TreeView X? LGPL, or GPL?
  Both or neither, anyhow its a problem.
 
 No, it's not.  The LGPL specifies that the user may redistribute the software
 under the LGPL, or the GPL.  So you (as packager) can simply choose to do your
 redistribution under the terms of the GPL.  It's a good idea to mention this
 in the copyright file, of course.
Ah yes, I wasn't aware of clause 3 of the LGPL:
 3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
 License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library.

Generally speaking, it could be a problem with the headers saying one
thing and the COPYING file saying another, but not in this case.

 - Craig
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Re: COPYING says GPL, but all headers say LGPL

[Craig Small]

 I have one last question: the package uses autoconf. Do I have to
 mention every autoconf-related file and remind their copyright holder
 and licence in the copyright file of the Debian package? I am a bit
 reluctant to do this. Too much information kills information.
I don't for any of my autoconfed packages. The output files have 
do whatever type of license, as does most output files of this type.

 - Craig

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Re: COPYING says GPL, but all headers say LGPL

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 06:13:44PM -0700, Tyler MacDonald wrote:
   This makes me wonder about ppport.h in perl-XS packages; by default,
 the generated ppport.h comes with a note saying it's licensed under the same
 terms as perl itself.
 
   However, if you run perl ppport.h --strip, all documentation *and*
 licensing information was removed. My feeling is that if the authors of
 Devel::PPPort allow the license to be removed (while still leaving other
 comments intact in the header file), that means that they really dont care
 how the released file is licensed.
They really should state that if it is their intention.  A lot of
those builder type programs do it, such as auto* bison and dh-make
(I changed it after someone pointed out the problem with not having
the specific exception).

 - Craig
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Re: About the libraries shipped with the sources of a package.

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 03:13:41PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
 I am packaging Treeview X (GPL) and the upstream tarball contains also
 the TreeLib (LGPL) and the Nexus library (GPL). For the moment,
 Treeview X is statically linked to them, just as what is done when
 building by ./configure  make.
OK, checking on what this was, I think I've read too much about biology
and done my head in.

 The binary package does not contain the libraries per se, but bits and
 pieces of them in the binary program. If I understand correctly, I will
 have to mention their licences in the copyright file.
It's statically linked, wether or not this is a good idea depends on 
if the library could be used elsewhere, it appears to use wxwidgets
which are already packaged and you should use those ones.

 Is adding something like this appropriate?
 
   Treeview X is statically linked to libfoo, and libbar. Libfoo (c) MrFoo
   1999 is distributed under the terms of the GPL, and libbar (c) MrBar
   1998 is distributed under the terms of the LGPL (adding extract and link
   similar to what is already done for the GPL in this file)
If you ship with them, then yes.

 Do I need separate statements for the statically linked binary file and
 the full sources of the libraries in the source package?
All your statements must cover all the software you ship. How you
arrange them is not that important as long as it makes sense.

 I also wanted to know wether these libraries were already distributed in
 other source packages, but packages.debian.org did not find anything.
 But is it searching the sources packages as well ?
treelib itself sounds just like a bunch of things that treeviewX needs,
so I suspect not. Nexus appears to be some sort of generic format, eg
biococoa can read NEXUS files, whatever the hell they are.

 Lastly, I am wondering wether packaging the libraries separately would
 be useful if Treeview X would be the only program to use them (in
 particular, I know that packaging libraries are not recommended to
 beginners in the art of packaging).
Nexus class libraries are found at http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/ncl/
I would strongly reccomend that these were packaged separately and that
you use the ones directly from the author's site.

Now we have a clash of names, as treelib could imply it has something to
do with treeview (eg it is a library for treeview).  However, wxwidgets
has a treeview (it is the directory tree thing for things like viewing
a filesystem). Which one is it?

While it would be quicker and simpler to just use what it comes with and
go nuts and statically compile the lot, it is not the best solution.
Keep specific libraries within the package, anything sourced elsewhere
should use the original source and be separate.  We get a better Debian
distribution  in the end.

A small example, what happens if someone wants to package the python
bindings for Nexus? If the library is locked into treeviewx then we
have duplicates. If the library is separate, we can just have the
bindings depend on the library in the usual Debian fashion.

 - Craig
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Re: COPYING says GPL, but all headers say LGPL

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 11:02:01AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
   It appears that, although the COPYING file and the website
 claim that TreeView X is GPL, all the source files have Library GPL
 headers (except the Nexus ones of course). Technically, what is the
 licence of TreeView X? LGPL, or GPL?
Both or neither, anyhow its a problem.
I would email the upstream author and ask them that you can see both
licenses and which one is he/she/they using?

procps had something like that and I got my clarification.

 - Craig
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Re: debian/rules::dh_* comments as rejection criteria (Was: Re: A list of common gotchas in Debian packaging)

[Craig Small]

On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 01:20:33PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
 It seems silly to me that the ftpmasters would take especial umbrage to
 A while not caring about B, and while probably not checking for C even
 though it is nearly identical to A in effect.

I think the ftpmasters should have much better things to do than waste
time about this whole issue. Does it really matter if these commented
lines are there? 

Some people don't like them; I don't like emacs. It doesn't mean I'd
go around rejecting packages that used that editor. And yes, I believe
this whole issue is as trivial and pointless as an editor war.

There are packages that need more work, plenty of packages! Why are we
even bothering about this at all?

 - Craig

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Re: PDF files and dh_compress

[Craig Small]

On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 11:41:17PM -0400, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
 So is there a recommendation anywhere in dev ref or deb policy regarding
 the PDF files? 
 
 Shouldn't it be recommended (withing dev ref or deb policy) to keep PDFs
 not compressed with gzip on top (at least in -doc packages)?
 
 Obviousely dh_compress doesn't bother checking if there is a good reason
 to compress the file (like some threshold gain, after which file has to
 be compressed). I doubt that it is worth implementing, but I think it
 should at least take care about not compressing pdf's in -doc packages.
 What do you think?
Fix the policy not the tool.
If there is a good reason not to compress pdf files, then it should be
put into the policy as an exception.  Currently if dh_compress did not
compress pdf files, it breaks 12.3 of policy.

There may be very good technical reasons for not compress pdf's, that's
fine, but we should not be fixing this just for one set of packaging
tools.

 is worth to provide linda/lintian warnings about twice compressed
 files or at least compressed pdfs in -doc packages.
Once policy is changed, yes. But not before.

 - Craig
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Re: PDF files and dh_compress

[Craig Small]

On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 11:58:42PM -0400, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
 Of cause we can call PDFs as text documentation, but often with the
 same success as png's with text in them. I bet policy intended to
 address regular textual (ASCII) files with documentation.
The text documentation is significant. We're only assuming we know 
what they were trying to describe here.

 Ironically .zip is among them (I believe PDF internally uses zip
 compression, doesn't it?)
Whatever the compression is, it is not too good.
I'm getting about 10-30% compression on pdfs.
Random text is just under 50% for me.

  Once policy is changed, yes. But not before.
 So as to me, there is no real need in fixing the policy, but rather this
 question has to be addressed in dev ref, or in packaging practices. ?
It needs to be clarified somewhere. Is a 10-30% compression ratio enough
to make it worthwhile? It is not debhelper's place to decide this but in
our documentation.

 - Craig
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Re: Non-Debian packaging practice

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 08:47:28PM -0500, Joe Smith wrote:
 
 Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message 
 news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Joe Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 So I must ask why do people dislike the autotools? Are there really
 problems that outweigh the benefits of being able to compile the program
 on strange architectures with little difficulty?  Remember that the
 autotools let one compile the program in the same way on a GNU/Linux
 system, Cygwin, BSD, and a large number of commercial unixes.
Problem #1 is Bad Documentation.

There is also a large amount of indirection involved to get things to
happen just the way you want them to.  A simple program is pretty
simple.

However I had a lot of difficultly getting the thing to, say, generate a
file nicely.  It is now doing it but it sure took a long time to work
out.

 - Craig
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Re: Non-Debian packaging practice

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 10:35:22PM -, StealthMonger wrote:
 Debian discourages creating Debian-native packages: This type of
 packaging is only appropriate for the debian-specific packages, which
 will never be useful in another distribution. [1]  But creating it
 for other distributions requires some knowledge of what those other
 distributions expect of a package.

I am/was upstream for a few packages that are used by multiple
distributions.  They're not too picky usually about their needs as
generally the distribution has to fit in with the upstream, but there
would be some points:

  - Have a clear copyright and license statement, especially if there
are multiple authors and/or you don't use one of the common ones
  - Make sure your dependencies are clearly defined so that the author
knows what to look for, if you use auto* make sure you check for
those libraries. If you need a specific version, make sure you check
that too
  - Make sure the thing builds twice or can do build, clean, build
Seriously, there is stuff out there that won't!
  - When it comes for installing, allow the installer to put the files
where they want. A DESTDIR or prefix variable helps, but so does
those not-so-obviously-named things that auto* provide.

 The current interest here is primarily in packages consisting of shell
 scripts, as opposed to compilable code, but presumably the question
 arises in either case.
For shell scripts, if you use just /bin/sh don't use bashisms, use
checkbashisms program to err, check for bashisms.

In general, writing something that works *for me* is easy, writing
something that works *for everyone* is a lot harder.

You'll probably not hear from package maintainers that much, over 5
years maintaining one thing and I've heard from some a handful of times.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: plans -- web calendar

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:36:39AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
 On 12-Sep-2005, Carlos Parra Camargo wrote:
  IMO, the description should be about the application, it shouldn't
  be a comparative.
 
 Agreed. I'd say rather that enough information about the application
 should be included so that the reader can make their own comparison.

You can do both. If your package has feature flaming unicycles while
package foo does not, just mention that feature, but no need to mention
that foo doesn't have it.

Putting it another way.  You are a user and you want a web calendar
thingy?  Which package satisfies your requirements better?  Obviously
there is only so much a package description can do.

 - Craig (who longs for the day one of these things is buildable AND
   integrates into OE)
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Re: A question regarding unofficial packages (for Xen)

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 03:16:45AM -0500, Yvette Chanco wrote:
 Apologies if the answer to this is obvious, or if this is the wrong
 list. My question involves Xen which has been maintained through
 2.0.5-3 (in experimental) by Adam Heath. I am not in any way trying to
 highjack this package - I was very happy with the original. However,
 since the release of Xen 2.0.6 (May 28th) there have been a few posts
 to the xen-users list suggesting that Adam is too busy to deal with
 this (including somebody who spoke with him on IRC), as well as calls
 to get a team of maintainers together. There have been some volunteers
 (as well as people, myself included, providing temporary, unofficial
 debs based on Adam's work) but no Debian Developers.
It's really going to come down to what Adam thinks he can do.  If he
believes he needs help then you could suggest that he sponsors you
(or a bunch of you).  I do know there is a lot of interest in Xen.

 I contacted some people on the Xen list to see if we could work
 together. I tried to reach Adam (although his lack of response could
Adam is [EMAIL PROTECTED], did you try that?

 The only things I could think to do were keep working on my packages
 to make them clean and conform with policy, and post to this list to
 ask for advice. Does anybody have thoughts on what the best course of
 action is?
You really need to try to get hold of Adam.  There may be a very good
reason why the latest version is not been uploaded; sometimes the
reason is not obvious if you don't know how Debian packages interact.

 - Craig
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Re: [RFH] Dealing with HTML templates in Web Software

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 02:48:59PM +0200, Alexis Sukrieh wrote:
 So on the first hand, it would be decent to put templates files under 
 /etc/bugzilla, in order not to break user's customizations ; and on the 
 other hand, major upgrades could lead to dangerous user-unfriendly merges.
 
 What would you advice me to do?
 What is the best location for Web applications template files?
 Is that issue already discussed somewhere so I can read previous 
 thoughts about that?

You could try to do it like how request tracker does and have two
directory trees.  The first one is the one as the package maintainer
fiddles with. The second is where the admin puts their modified files.

The magic comes with how you handle the two trees.  Of course a
well-designed system will make sure the templates are just templates (eg
formatting with no code at all) so there is not that many changes.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: phpicalendar -- clean, logical iCal/vCalendar web interface

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 10:56:16PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Both Chad  I really look forward to making this package part of 
 Debian
 - please consider sponsoring it : )

What's happened to the website for the project? It's still down.
That's a shame because I'm looking for something that does ical,
preferbly two-way too.

 - Craig
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Re: upgrading database tables and data

[Craig Small]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2005 at 12:29:29PM -0600, David Everly wrote:
 Does anyone know of a package that I can look at that has a mechanism to
 run a series of certain SQL scripts based on upgrading from a certain
 version to a certain version?
 
 For instance, when upgrading from 1.1-1 to 1.1-2, I want to delete a row
 from a table, when upgrading from 1.1-2 to 1.2-1, I want to alter a
 table, and when upgrading from 1.1-1 to 1.2-1, I want to do both of
 these actions (first the delete, then the alter).

I do this in the JFFNMS package. If you want to see how I did it make
sure you get one that uses the compare-versions features and not the old
way with a switch statement.

I do ask the admin if they want this done automatically.

  - Craig
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Re: RFS: tex4ht -- LaTeX and TeX for Hypertext (HTML)

[Craig Small]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 04:18:06PM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor who will help me to upload tex4ht.

Hello Kapil,
  I use LaTeX and even general some webpages with it (using hyperlatex
though). If you haven't got a sponsor then I'll do it.

 - Craig
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Re: Help about license

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 07:18:38PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
 After this there should be either a copy of the GPL, or a reference
 where it can be found. On Debian, it often looks as what I paste below,
 but for upstream this is obviously not possible.  Also note that it is
 *not* sufficient to put a copy of the GPL in the tarball.  Instead,
 there *must* be a statement that the software is intended to be covered
 by that license!

Some people may consider that to be something theoretical and really if
the GPL file is there, all is well?

Perhaps a real-life example could illustrate why that assumption is a
bad idea.

There was a program that allowed group chat, consider it a cut-down
version of a irc daemon, for hamradio operators.  A quick check and you
would think it was licensed under the GPL, no problem to go into main.

However a more throurough check showed that while some parts of it were
licensed under the GPL, parts were not.  In fact there were about 4
types of licenses, including some that conflicted.  To make matters
worse, some of the files were written by others but had no license at
all.

In effect, the software could not be legally distributed. Probably any
one of the 20 developers could object. As far as Debian or any other
distributor was concerned, it was a complete write-off.  The real shame
is I don't think that any of the developers wanted it that way.

 - Craig
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Re: Some questions

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 04:34:44PM +0100, Lars Roland wrote:
 2) When you update the database software from, say, version 1.0 to 1.1
 then it would be preferable to NOT generate all the tables again (that
 is, mysoftware-db 1.1 should just alter or extend the tables that
 mysoftware-db 1.0 created). Can I somehow create a package that
 depends on earlier versions of itself ? - or is there some other
 scheme that is used when you are in a situation where software depends
 on earlier versions of itself ?.
I have that problem with JFFNMS. There are two seaprate issues.
On a new install, create the database
On an upgrade, upgrade database schema.

First thing is to ask the admin, they might not like you playing with
the database!

I do all this magic in the postinst script.
A new install will be called as
postinst configure
An upgrade will be called as
postinst configure (last version)
So you do a test like [ -z $2 ] to see if it is a new install.
If so I have a mysql or postgresql dump and I just pipe that into the
database client.

Now the upgrades are trickier.  There are a set of files for each
version, called jffnms-(oldver)-(newver).mysql.  It doesn't have to be
multiple files for each version, but there definitely should be a file
per version change, unless there is no DB changes.

I then start at the oldest version (0.7.2) and use dpkg
--compare-versions $2 lt 0.7.3-1
EG, was the last configured version ($2) less than 0.7.3-1, which
means it was 0.7.2-something
I then call a function upgrading the database from 0.7.2-0.7.3
I keep doing that for each step there are database changes, so there
are 8 of these in postinst.

  - Craig
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Re: RFS: gaim-themes : Smiley themes collection for gaim

[Craig Small]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 07:40:19PM +0100, Martin Braure de Calignon wrote:
 I am looking for a sponsor for this packages.
 It exists in ITP list (#297961).
 It can be downloaded at :
 http://www.enseirb.fr/~braurede/deb_dev/gaim-themes/
I can sponsor this if you like.

 - Craig
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Re: RFS: mocp -- music on console player

[Craig Small]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 12:15:08PM +0100, Michal Jeczalik Jr wrote:
  I have already got a sponsor, sorry.
No need to be sorry, glad you have one.

  - Craig
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Re: RFS: mocp -- music on console player

[Craig Small]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 03:06:35PM +0100, Michal Jeczalik Jr wrote:
  You can find the package on: http://www.orora.org/michalj/debian/mocp/
 
  I have been using it for half a year.  Also a few friends of mine use
  it.  It has useful 'detach' option and supports themes. mocp-2.1.4 is
  a stable  version (2.2.x is  development). Now  I   am looking for  a
  sponsor.  Feedback would also be appreciated.

It's very nice and I can see that the latest appears to have all the
Debian kinks sorted out now.  I can sponsor it if you like and you
haven't already got a sponsor.

 - Craig
-- 
Craig Small  GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE  95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
Eye-Net Consulting http://www.enc.com.au/   MIEE Debian developer
csmall at : enc.com.au  ieee.org   debian.org


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Re: maint-guide update (chapt 6-9, appendix)

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 01:44:51AM +0100, Osamu Aoki wrote:
 I need critical review again.  New maint-guide should show up on the web
 soon as the *11* January 2005 version at
 
   http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
 
 I am thinking to upload around 23rd based on this version.
 
 Joy or anyone, if you do not like any contents here, please tell me so.
 I will accommodate your request.

You know it would of been a good idea to at the very least show the two
URLs of the before and after document.  A colour-coded diff (ala
viewcvs and friends) would also of helped.

I'm not sure which one you are talking about now and it would of been
nice to see considering how... vocal I am sometimes about the Debian
documents.

 - Craig
-- 
Craig Small  GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE  95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
Eye-Net Consulting http://www.enc.com.au/   MIEE Debian developer
csmall at : enc.com.au  ieee.org   debian.org


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