[Debian-in-workers] Indic language hyphenation packages update

[Balasankar C]

Hi,

On ശനി 10 ഒക്ടോബര്‍ 2015 12:30 വൈകു, Vasudev Kamath wrote:
> Please update existing repo and please take over the packaging. Idea of
> using git is not loose packaging history.
Ok. Will do that.
> Is upstream packaging single tarball?. 
Upstream provides all hyphen-* stuff in the single repo - http://gitlab.com/smc/hyphenation  . Latest release may be found at https://gitlab.com/smc/hyphenation/tags  .
> If no then why do you want
> merge?. 
I think in my last mail I explicitly said that at present upstream _does_ serve all hyphenation related stuff in a single repo.
> How do you keep track of new releases if you merge everything
> into single repo?. 
I can't understand what is the issue, when everything comes from a _single upstream repo_. How will it affect the process of keeping track? Even if they continue being different packages, one should refer to the Gitlab repo I pointed earlier for keeping track of updates. How is it any different if it became a single package?
Anyway, merging was only a suggestion to reduce the trouble of maintenance since all of them were similar packages from the same upstream source. If the team wishes to continue the existing way of maintenance, it is fine with me.
> Lets say tomorrow you stop actively working on smc
> (upstream) for some personal reason then what happens to the package?
> who keep tracks of new release?.
I think that is a hypothetical question. How will we keep track of the existing hyphen-* packages when the maintainers are MIA (as you said in your first reply)? Why should I be taking up hyphen-ml when it was packaged long back and not yet uploaded to archive? Because I was interested in making that available through Debian archive.
I think a package being team-maintained and the process being well communicated (like I am doing now) will do fine in the scenario you described. The people interested/willing will keep track of the packages. Let's not be over concerned about something (which, IMO is easily manageable) that may or may not happen in the future and let it be the reason for a package not being updated. :)

For a set of packages that
1. are extremely similar and may be grouped together
2. may not have new versions released frequently
3. if released, probability of being released at same time is high
I think it is better to maintain them as a single package creating multiple binaries.  While fonts doesn't belong to this category, I think hyphenation packages fit very well in that category and hence can be handled as such. 

Anyway, I may be wrong about the above and this needs to be taken only as a suggestion. :)

-- 
Regards
Balasankar C
http://balasankarc.in