On Sat, 9 Dec 1995, Ian Murdock wrote: > On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, Bruce Perens wrote: > > > From: Ian Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > 6a. No unnecessary up/down-loading by maintainers. > > > > Is this such a big issue? With your overseas FTP problems you can judge > > that, but I'd feel more confident if the maintainer uploaded the entire > > package as one piece. > > I agree. I think that providing patches only would be a bad idea, > for reasons that have already been described here. I am strongly > of the opinion that we should provide source packages in an > easily-rebuildable form, without the need to apply patches and such. > > I like Ian Jackson's proposal.
I liked it too. To recap what was proposed: + foo-1.2-5.debian-diff + foo-1.2.orig/foo.c + /foo.h + &c This would be contained in a tarfile or somesuch. (actually, I'd rather see foo-1.2-5.debian-diff and foo-1.2.orig.tgz, but I'm not religious about that) foo-1.2-5.debian-diff would contain debianizing patches for the pristine upstream upstream sources which follow, with the patches being applied mechanically during unpacking of the debian source package. For debian-originated packages, foo-1.2-<whatever>.debian.diff might be a required component which could be empty of diffs, or might be optional (both alternatives have been mentioned). As regards the 6a question, it seems that the foo-1.2 package maintainer could upload foo-1.2-6.debian-diff, and processing on the distribution site could upgrade the foo-1.2-5 source package to foo-1.2-6 by replacing the diff component. Users would always download a complete package containing pristine upstream sources and debian-release-numbered debianizing diffs, with diffs to be mechanically applied on the user's machine during unpacking to produce debianized sources.
