[Pkg-rrfw-general] Re: Unofficial Debian packages for RRFW 0.1.7 available

[Marc Haber]

Hi Jurij,

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:18:34AM -0400, Jurij Smakov wrote:
> Thanks for looking at the packages.

You're welcome. I will need them soon ;)

> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Marc Haber wrote:
> > I haven't actually tried them out yet, but you have a few minor
> > lintian and linda issues. Some of your maintainer scrips are missing
> > the debhelper token which might let the package end up with incomplete
> > maintainer scripts, you need to have a versioned build dep on
> > debhelper 4 since your debian/rules uses DH_COMPAT=4, and
> > /usr/lib/rrfw/rrfw_action_snmptrap is installed to /usr/lib, but it
> > should be in /usr/share as an architecture independent file.
> 
> Yes, I have missed some warnings/errors reported by linda. I have only
> checked the packages with lintian before the upload and it failed to
> report any problems.

Lintian finds some of the problems as well. Always use the very latest
lintian, and invoke it on the .changes file, not on the .deb. Invoking
lintian and linda on the .changes file will find problems with the
source packages as well.

> I'll introduce the versioned dep on debhelper and
> correct the rrfw_action_snmptrap problem. As for the debhelper token
> missing from the maintainer scripts, this is by design. I played with
> it a bit and decided that I feel a bit uncomfortable with all these
> automatic substitutions, so I have put all the needed stuff there by
> hand (by looking at automatically generated code).

IMO, this is a bad idea. I used to feel bad with the automagic code as
well, but the _big_ advantage of using debhelper is that you'll get
automatic adaption to newer policy versions. If policy decides that
some things are bound to change, a package using debhelper needs a
rebuild only and automatically conforms to new policy. This also
of great help if one backports your package to an older distribution
which has a different policy: The older debhelper will automatically
do the right thing for the target.

Executive Summary: Using debhelper autoscripts is a good idea, please
consider doing so.

If you insist on breaking things yourself, please at least add a
lintian override to avoid the warning.

> > rrfw-common binary depends on libapache2-parseformdata-perl which
> > doesn't seem to be in Debian at all. Where can that package be
> > obtained, and is it really needed by rrfw-common instead of
> > rrfw-apache2 (libapache_2_-parseformdata-perl)?
> 
> You are completely right, libapache2-parseformdata-perl is not in the
> archive yet. I have filed the RFP for it, but since no-one has responded
> for a while, I have packaged it myself. Its source/binary packages are
> available from the same repository on alioth as the rrfw packages, or
> at [0] and [1] (respectively), if you prefer just to wget it.

I see, thanks. I overlooked that.

> As for which package should declare the dependency on it, it is an open
> question. Since rrfw-apache and rrfw-apache2 are pseudopackages, only
> providing the corresponding configuration files and setting up stuff in
> postinst, to me it seems more consistent for rrfw-common to pull in all
> the needed dependencies, especially since Apache::ParseFormData module
> is referenced by the files in it. If you would like to change it, I will
> not have any strong objection.

Is libapache2-parseformdata-perl needed for an installation running
apache 1?

Greetings
Marc

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