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

[Jani Monoses]

Simon Huggins wrote:
> 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

^^^ This is what you suggested on IRC a while ago...
> 
> 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.

.. so no dependence on CDBS maintainer is needed.
> 
> 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.

Right, but if you needed a change, chances are you need it in more than
one, probably all packages. Actually that was the reason we went with
CDBS in the first place (to avoid appending a line to all .desktop files
provided by xfce packages by writing the same commands in all rules
files). A short time after that when all POTFILES needed to be massaged
it all became a lot simpler.

> 
>>> 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.

CDBS is less flexible, true, but so far I found no need more than what
it can offer. Not using it because of a theoretical situation when
nothing but plain debhelper would do means missing out on the advantages
And you already use cdbs  and dpatch too, so at least for consistency it
would make sense to converge on one solution.
> 
> But your proposal to converge is basically "Use our way or not".

Right, but after having presented the advantages and the reasons for
doing it, with no real counterarguments besides that it is work to be
done when the current situation is 'not broken'.

> 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.

It would mean just copying what is in ubuntu so there should be no
serious problems. After all the new files are simpler

Jani