[Pkg-xfce-devel] Re: bringing closer the debian/ubuntu packages

[Simon Huggins]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 12:50:59PM +0300, Jani Monoses wrote:
> >> We now patch cdbs, but after huggie said he'd prefer to not rely on
> >> the cdbs maintainer for this I also think it's better to have the cdbs
> >> class provided by the pkg-xfce team as well. For an example of how
> >> it's done outside cdbs check out ruby-pkg-tools. The ruby debian team
> >> has it's own cdbs stuff and it is maintained by them.
> > None of these are particularly good solutions for us though.  We'd need
> > to have a new build-depend which Ubuntu packages wouldn't incorporate
> > which is another difference and then we'd have to change that package
> > for any minor changes to our build system.
> I don't understand which b-d you'd need that ubuntu would not, and what
> changes in the build system would trigger changes in that package?

If we use cdbs we need to ship your xfce.mk file or similar somewhere.
I suspect we wouldn't persuade the cdbs maintainer to do this or if we
do then we would need to rely on them to update it.

If we have a glaring packaging error across a large number of packages
we'd want to update the xfce.mk file rather than hacking it into every
debian/rules (or we lose the only advantage cdbs has) and to do that
we'd have to wait for a new release of cdbs to build-depend on.

The other alternative is to ship xfce.mk in the CDBS directories (or
somwhere else sane I guess) maybe in our xfce4-dev-tools package and
build-dep on that everywhere.  But again this means if we want to make a
change to our packaging we'd have to updload a new version of this
package.

> > Sure but in that case why did you switch the Ubuntu packaging to
> > something entirely different moving away from our debhelped based
> > packaging?
> The reasons I have already explained in past mails.

That it's simpler is clear but it is a bit less flexible and certainly
so if you use your own CDBS file as opposed to using the generic ones
that you have modified.

> > It would have been much easier to merge changes - as it is now I can't
> > think that we will ever merge changes and patches will be applied and
> > bugs fixed on both sides independently.  This seems very stupid.
> It is stupid, hence my proposal to converge. But that does not mean
> we'll just work on the existing debian packages because you don't feel
> like changing the status quo. The cdbs system we use is better in many
> ways for our purposes and we'll stick with it for the foreseeable future
> regardless of what debian does.

But your proposal to converge is basically "Use our way or not".
Changing over the packaging would be a fair amount of work for us, would
introduce bugs no doubt (we're not perfect) and I can't see any huge
benefits.

I'm just not convinced it's the way forwards or that the advantages of
cdbs are that great.

-- 
Simon  [ huggie at earth.li ] *\  "Ah, here we are - `How to Raise the  \**
****** ]-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-[ **\                Dead.'" - Bart Simpson  \*
****** [  Htag.pl 0.0.22 ] ***\                                        \
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