[Dctrl-tools-devel] initial thoughts

[Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2007 at 10:02:02PM -0500, Jon Bernard wrote:
>   1. First, how come all archs are at version 2.12 except sparc, hppa,
>   and arm? I didn't see any FTBFS bugs, are they just waiting to be
>   built or is there some other reason?

According to
  http://people.debian.org/~igloo/status.php?packages=dctrl-tools
they are all "building".  According to
  http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?arch=&pkg=dctrl-tools
they have all finished a successful build.

Probably it's just that uploading is currently impossible due to the
ftp-master problem.

>   2. #440348 is marked done, should that be closed? Or is that
>   pending testing or inclusion into all archs, or something else?

The problem is that some arches still contain the non-fixed package in
unstable.  Not our problem.

>   3. I think a good place to start would be updating/maintaining the
>   debian/ directory. That will allow me to get a good handle on how
>   things are built and how everything works.

If you plan to do any reorg there, try to do it separately from fixing
bugs, so it is easy to verify that the reorg doesn't introduce new ones.
Please post nontrivial patches before pushing.

>   4. There definitely needs to be a tutorial of some sort. The man pages
>   are thorough, but a bit confusing to a user who has never used
>   grep-dctrl before and just wants a quick do-this-to-make-it-work
>   example (or I'm just an idiot, that possibity always exists). I think a
>   tutorial and manpage updates would be time well spent, and it would knock
>   out a few wishlist bugs at the same time.

Have fun :)

I'm probably going to continue going through the sources looking for
sloppy code.  I have a slight refactor in mind that would make the code
better and also allow one other tool that I've been planning for years.

My current thought is to do a package freeze sometime around New Year so
the package is in the best shape possible before lenny freezes.  New
development would take place in experimental after that (and if lenny is
delayed for a long time, we can always move it back to unstable).  Any
comments?

-- 
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland
http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/