Re: debian and upstream (was: overhaul of the debian ocaml policy)
I cross-post this thread to debian-projectl@l.d.o. As Ralf Treinen said,
this is a general question rather than an OCaml specific question.
Summary:
Ralf Treinen is reviewing the OCaml packaging policy and we discussed a
point about adding features to upstream package. We would like to share
this discussion with other Debian packagers to know what is the best
practice.
Point of view 1:
We can add features to upstream software. Debian goal is to deliver
non-broken software and we should even improve it.
It includes fixing examples, documentation and the software itself. One
of the example was adding a way to detect user's locale setting which
was not accepted upstream because of portability issue on Windows.
Point of view 2:
We should limit patches to upstream software to packaging matter:
- fix the build system to make it compile on Debian
- fix security bugs
The benefit of this approach for a packager are:
- patches only apply to things most of DD or DM know: build system for
example, so it is easier for anyone to understand the meaning of
patches (while adding features can be tougher to understand for
newcomers)
- patches are easier to maintain on the long-term
- no difference of behavior for the software between Linux
distributions
We don't exclude doing more specific patches, but this should only be
temporary and hopefully immediatly sent upstream.
POV2 is a little bit more documented than POV1, because I support POV1.
Maybe Ralf or others can extend POV1.
Thank you for giving us your opinions/best practices/experiences about
this.
Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall
On 24-08-2010, Ralf Treinen wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 03:19:21PM +0200, Stéphane Glondu wrote:
>> Le 23/08/2010 11:13, Ralf Treinen a écrit :
>> >>>> Whenever you patch the source, IMHO, you limit the patch to:
>> >>>> - fix the build system to make it compile on Debian (source -> binary
>> >>>> package, new OCaml version)
>> >>>> - fix security bugs
>> >>>
>> >>> Certainly not. We do add features (I am speaking here of debian packages
>> >>> in general, not only of ocaml libraries), and we fix things that are
>> >>> broken.
>>
>> Not any feature. I would tend to agree with Sylvain on this one. It may
>> cause portability issues with non-Debian users, and can make the
>> packaging harder to maintain and update (see advi, for example).
>
> The situation with advi has improved a lot. Currently, the debian patch set
> is very small.
>
> Besides, I do not see why we shouldn't add any feature. Of course,
> we should try to cooperate with upstream and have changes integrated
> upstream, but there are various reasons why this is not possible. In that
> case, our priority should be the quality of the software provided by
> our packages.
>
>> If the patch is committed upstream, then I guess it's ok to put it in
>> the Debian package if it is backward compatible somehow... but still,
>> care should be taken and I wouldn't do that if I wasn't following
>> upstream development more than for my average package.
>>
>> Upstream development should be done upstream (I don't say that the
>> packager should not contribute...). A package is perfect when the
>> packaging is trivial and there are no patches.
>
> This is the ideal situation, I agree. However, there are two sides who
> have to cooperate to maintain that ideal situation.
>
> But this is really getting off topic now. This discussion would be more
> appropriate for debian-project.
>
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