On Thu, 13 May 2010, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: > On 12 May 2010 at 22:40, Don Armstrong wrote: > | However, the whole idea of having source package which do not > | produce at least a binary of the same name is fundamentally > | broken, and I have spoken repeatedly against doing it. > > Well narrowly spoken I then still do the right thing as my 'source > pkg: sm' with 'binary pkg: r-cran-sm' does provide the 'command' > > library(sm) > > inside R.
Right, the logic behind choosing sm as a source package name for r-cran-sm is clear. My main problem with it is just the ramifications of doing that in Debian. If I was paying more attention when R packages started coming into the archive, I would have lobbied harder for them to follow the lib*-perl model, where the source package and the binary package have the same name... so the binary package r-cran-sm would be built by the r-cran-sm source package, and if you wanted the R library sm, you'd just look for r-*-sm. [Since users don't generally see the source package name, it tends not to matter what it's called.] > There can't be another 'binary command' for the R language, but > every R users refers to this as 'sm'. Well, there could be, but hopefully people wouldn't at least conflict with the CRAN repository. > But I know what you really imply. I do get the 'letter' but not the > 'spirit' of this suggestion. The spirit here is really just to avoid confusion where you have a binary and source package which share the same name, but are built from different source packages. I've made changes to the BTS to handle this issue, so that the BTS deals with it properly, but (as evidenced by this bug) it's confusing for the maintainers and users who haven't been exposed to this problem and its solution. For the record, if you mean the source package sm, you need to file bugs against: Source: sm or reassign them using reassign nnn src:sm Source packages will always have 'src:' prefixed, which works ok, because ';' isn't a valid character for a package name. As a nod to backwards compatibility, bugs filed against a package 'foo' which isn't a binary package, but is a source package, will behave as if they were assigned to 'src:foo'. Otherwise, it's assumed that you mean the binary package, not the source package. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. [If it didn't, or doesn't in the future, please let me know.] Don Armstrong -- When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. -- Emo Philips. http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
