[Debian-med-packaging] samtools i386-buildable

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Charles,

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 06:20:03PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 03:04:41PM +0900, Charles Plessy a écrit :
> > Le Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 10:27:49PM -0700, Afif Elghraoui a écrit :
> > > 
> > > I have backported upstream patches to enable i386-building of samtools
> > > 1.2, fixed a problem where consecutive rebuilds of the package would
> > > fail, and set up symlinks so that the scripts with language extensions
> > > could also be called without them.
> > > 
> > > Would you (or anyone else) mind uploading it? I still need to work on
> > > htslib to be able to get all these packages migrated to testing.
> 
> I had a quick look and I have two comments:
> 
>  - about programs with language extensions removed, I think that it is a
>    disservice to our users: if they start to use them by mistake in scripts
>    that they intend to share with collaborators, these scripts will be
>    guaranteed to fail on non-Debian platforms... let's save our users from
>    this.

If upstream decides to rewrite a script xyz.pl in Python and will name
it to xyz.py users scripts will be broken as well.  To save our users
from this section 10.4 of the Debian policy was written.  You can not
save users from all bad things that might happen and thus I try to
follow sensible arguments.  These were frequently given and since the
discussion comes up frequently I now assembled a section on the Upstream
Guide wiki page:

   https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide#Language_extensions_in_scripts

BTW, since the creation of /usr/lib/debian-med/bin we could consider to
keep the scripts including the extension there.  I'm not convinced that
this a good idea - just mentioning it as a possible compromise.
 
>  - about files that make consecutive rebuilds difficult: these come from the
>    fact that, like for htslib, the source package's Git repository tracks the
>    upstream Git repository in GitHub (I will document this).  Between two
>    builds I simply reset the directory with 'git checkout' and 'git clean'.
>    Would it be OK to keep these files in order to avoid potential merge
>    failures from the master branch ?

IMHO using Git should be no excuse to break good packaging practice to
be able building packages twice in a row.
 
Kind regards

      Andreas. 

-- 
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