[debhelper-devel] Bug#515856: Bug#515856: debhelper: please implement dh get-orig-source

[Helmut Grohne]

Control: reassign -1 debian-policy
Control: retitle -1 remove get-orig-source
Control: tags -1 = patch

Dear policy maintainers,

I believe that we should remove get-orig-source from the Debian policy
for the following reasons.

According to codesearch.d.n, get-orig-source is implemented by less than
3000 source packages. This is not very low, but neither a high adoption
rate. It certainly makes using get-orig-source somewhat useless on a
distribution-scale. In contrast, we have some 22500 watch files, an
order of magnitude more. I think it is obvious which mechanism has won.

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 04:34:00PM +0000, Niels Thykier wrote:
> I am not convinced get-orig-source is well-defined enough that dh can do
> something useful here.

This issue is coming up repeatedly as well. The major concerns raised in
other bug reports (e.g. #466550 or #873001) are:

 * The requirement that get-orig-source may be invoked from any
   directory is difficult to fulfil and often times not implemented. A
   lot of packages (of the 3000 above) simply defer to uscan violating
   it.

 * It is not clear whether the most recent upstream version or the
   currently packaged version should be downloaded.

 * It is not clear where required tools should be declared.

 * The relevance of releases shrinks as upstreams move to distribution
   via VCS exclusively.

It is clear the vagueness of get-orig-source has caused significant work
on debian-mentors for trying to implement it properly. This raises the
bar to packaging in a way that I do not consider a useful use of
mentee's time.

This is why Niels Thykier refused to implement get-orig-source in
debhelper:

> Finally, it is not even clear to me that dh can implement this as you
> need the makefile to determine the package directory and it is probably
> only available in make (if you don't explicitly export it).

I believe that if debhelper is not going to support us in increasing
get-orig-source adoption, then we should just stop doing it and move on
to watch files.

I am attaching the removal patch and call for seconds.

Helmut
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