[Debian-med-packaging] GNU Health [1.8.0] (new version)

[Emilien Klein]

Hi Dmitry

2013/2/19 Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob at member.fsf.org>:
> Dear Emilien,
>
> Thank you for having a look at "gnuhealth" package.

Thanks for reviewing my changes, peer review is the reason we work in the open.


> I've noticed that upstream released new version [1.8.0]: according to its
> changelog it may be compatible with Tryton-2.6 that we have in "experimental".

Great, it was scheduled for 2012-12-31, I checked a few times in
January but didn't check again in February. Now that it's released
with support for Tryton 2.6, we should be able to update it and upload
to experimental.

> Also in November 2012 with your commit to "gnuhealth" repository you've
> managed to overwrite some of my valid changes, notably:
>
>         debian/control:
>          * "Standards-Version: 3.9.4" (current version) to 3.9.3
>          * "debhelper (>= 9)" to "debhelper (>= 8.0.0)"
>
>         debian/compat:
>          * 9 --> 8
>
> Please note that according to debhelper(7), v9 "is the recommended mode of
> operation". Your commit have no information why you downgraded
> debhelper/compat and standards neither it is clear what's the benefit (if any)
> or intention behind it.

When working on this package I started from a fresh `dh_make` and
progressively added more changes, explaining the changes to
Standards-Version, debhelper and debian/compat. The values come from
dh_make at that time, no problem in updating them.

> Detailed commit messages describing *why* the change has been made are very
> useful for team work.

Completely agree. Because I'm doing most of my work on the move
(without an Internet connection that is), and the repo using SVN, I
didn't commit bit by bit, and as a result didn't include detailed
enough changelog message. I'll make sure to do that in the future.

> Also I'm a bit concerned regarding another change that you've made to
> debian/copyright:
>
>         -           2011-2012 Sebastián Marró <smarro at thymbra.com>
>         -           2008-2012 Sebastian Marro <smarro at gnusolidario.org>
>         +           2008-2012 Sebastian Marró <smarro at gnusolidario.org>
>
> It looks like you've merged unique contributor's copyright statements derived
> from source files and changed his name in process. Could you please explain
> how you've decided on particular spelling of his name (and surname)??
> It looks inconsistent to me: either you have to spell his name using latin
> characters only or otherwise. I don't understand why you dropped non-latin
> character from his name but kept non-latin spelling of surname...
>
> Also I'm concerned about merging such copyright statements. Author used two
> different emails during different years of his contribution. I think from
> legal p>oint of view this information may be significant if he was contributing
> as employee (as in theory employer may claim the rights for this
> contribution). IMHO you can only speculate regarding which statement is less
> significant and therefore risk loosing valuable information as well as
> secondary contact email. I see no harm in keeping both statements (as well as
> keep original name spelling), but it would be nice if another team member
> could comment on this issue...

I hadn't realized you had extracted that from the source files, let's
revert to the previous version.

Now regarding other changes I made, I spent most of my time writing up
the debian/README.Debian instructions, while reinstalling the project
several times to make sure I got all the steps right, and updating
upstream's wiki (installation instructions were still focused on
version 1.2).

Andreas commented [0] that the steps described therein is what we
would try to already perform for our users in the maintainers'
scripts. I do agree it would make sense to create the database, the
user, etc. to make it directly usable after installation. Not sure
what to do about the PostgreSQL configuration, not sure we should mess
with that...

Do you have any suggestions/ideas on how to handle this?

One more thing: I started "playing around" with the Debian package [1]
just before your contributions at the end of October, so I hadn't
realized you had worked on the package on Oct 26 and 27, as your name
is not listed in the Files: debian/* section of debian/copyright. You
might want to fix this ;)

Cheers, and thanks again for your review!
   +Emilien

[0] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2012-November/017921.html
[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2012-October/017628.html