[php-maint] Re: bringing existing seperately packaged on-tree modules into main source package?

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 06:09:46PM +0100, sean finney wrote:

> after implementing the mighty configuration update for the php packages,
> it's become apparent to me that we also need to do this for each of the
> seperately packaged modules split off from the source package.

> this unfortunately is a bit of work, and not very rewarding at that.

Isn't it the responsibility of the maintainers of those individual module
packages to do this?  The whole reason most of these were split off in the
first place was because the PHP maintainers had no interest in maintaining a
broad set of modules that they didn't use and knew nothing about, and judged
that it wasn't a good use of resources to bundle these all in a single
source package because of a) library entanglement problems, b)
updating/building all of php4 and/or php5 in response to a bugfix for a
particular extension is an inefficient use of the buildds and doesn't allow
very well for parallelization of maintenance, c) many extensions are now
available in PECL in a form suitable for building against both php4 and
php5, providing better package consistency than what we get if each of php4
and php5 are building a different in-tree version.

I think the bundling of all extensions in a single source package is yet
another example of PHP upstream's incompetence, and we shouldn't necessarily
follow their ill-informed example just because we're saddled with copies of
all of these modules in the source package.  Actually, now that there's no
need to edit php.ini for modules, there's no need for debconf templates or
updates, which makes it even easier than ever to maintain modules out of
tree..

> additionally, each of these modules are currently uninstallable from
> unstable, because of a phpapi change in 5.2.0, so they need to be
> rebuilt and uploaded.

Well, if people weren't being clever and giving binary packages different
version numbers from their source, these would be binNMUed already :P

> so, i'm wondering... wouldn't it just make life a bit easier to enable
> the modules in php4/php5, generate the packages from the main source
> package (and taking whatever steps are necessary to make the seperate
> source packages to disappear) and get on with life?

> iirc, for the existing packages (all but -tidy), it shouldn't get php
> stuck in NEW since they're already in the archive, right?

That's true that they won't get php stuck in NEW, though it will definitely
get php entangled more frequently in library transitions.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/