Package: devscripts Version: 2.11.8 Severity: wishlist Dear Maintainer, *** Please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***
* What led up to the situation? For some time the Debian Perl Group has maintained a tool, called repack.sh and documented at http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/howto/repacking.html, for repacking upstream tarballs. In its way it is quite powerful as it is driven by a shell script fragment, debian/repack.local. Typically in the Perl world this is used to remove the offending file and remove the corresponding line from the MANIFEST file. I have also seen it used to extract a tarball that was packed inside a tarball (as well as removing the non-DFSG material). However as Debian Perl Group members have broadened their interests the tool has been used in many packages beyond the the Perl Group. I see dangers, both in Debian not having a standard way of repacking upstream tarballs and people using the Perl groups tool without it becoming official. These dangers are made potentially release critical, since when repacking goes wrong non-DFSG material could, and temporarily has, leaked into the main archive. Firstly in not having a standard solution mainatainers are forced to roll their own. In the case of mysql recently the repacking, although in plain view in the debian/rules file, was not in anyway actually documented, whether in the version number, debian/copyright, debian/watch, debian/rules or debian/README.source. Neither of the maintainers were aware that the get-orig-source rule was repacking. And in the 5.5.23 such material did leak into the main archive temporarily. Secondly if the Debian Perl Groups's tool is adopted, then its current practice is to rely on the repack.sh script being in the user's PATH. As the tool spreads further beyond the Debian Perl Group this is likely to become more and more of an issue. It is not formally packaged anywhere. * What outcome did you expect instead? I would like someone from the devscripts maintainers to adopt the tool and do whatever might be needed to make it suitable for inclusion in devscripts. The documentation is availavble at http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/howto/repacking.html. The code is available at http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-perl/scripts.git;a=blob_plain;f=repack.sh;hb=HEAD version=3 . -- Package-specific info: --- /etc/devscripts.conf --- --- ~/.devscripts --- Not present -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages devscripts depends on: ii dpkg-dev 1.16.1.2 ii libc6 2.13-32 ii perl 5.14.2-11 ii python 2.7.2-10 ii python2.6 2.6.7-4 ii python2.7 2.7.3~rc2-2.1 Versions of packages devscripts recommends: ii at <none> ii curl 7.26.0-1 ii dctrl-tools 2.22.1 ii debian-keyring 2012.02.22 ii dput 0.9.6.3 ii equivs 2.0.9 ii fakeroot 1.18.3-1 ii gnupg 1.4.12-4 ii libcrypt-ssleay-perl 0.58-1 ii libdistro-info-perl <none> ii libjson-perl 2.53-1 ii libparse-debcontrol-perl 2.005-2 ii libsoap-lite-perl 0.714-1 ii liburi-perl 1.60-1 ii libwww-perl 6.04-1 ii lintian 2.5.7 ii man-db 2.5.7-8 ii patch 2.6.1-3 ii patchutils 0.3.2-1.1 ii python-debian 0.1.21 ii python-magic <none> ii sensible-utils 0.0.7 ii strace 4.5.20-2.3 ii unzip 6.0-6 ii wdiff 1.1.1-1 ii wget 1.13.4-3 ii xz-utils 5.1.1alpha+20110809-3 Versions of packages devscripts suggests: ii bsd-mailx [mailx] 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1 ii build-essential 11.5 ii cvs-buildpackage <none> ii devscripts-el <none> ii gnuplot <none> ii libauthen-sasl-perl <none> ii libfile-desktopentry-perl <none> ii libnet-smtp-ssl-perl <none> ii libterm-size-perl <none> ii libtimedate-perl 1.2000-1 ii libyaml-syck-perl <none> ii mutt 1.5.21-5 ii openssh-client [ssh-client] 1:6.0p1-1 ii svn-buildpackage 0.8.4 ii w3m 0.5.3-8 -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
