[Debichem-devel] cclib_1.0.1-1_i386.changes REJECTED

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 08:59:12AM +0200, Karol M. Langner wrote:
> Here is the cclib source package:
> http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/c/cclib/
> which creates cclib and python-cclib and doesn't contain any of
> the offending files. Note that the package cclib contains just two scripts,
> but I guess that's OK because in the future it should get more content.
> 
> Here is the cclib-data source package:
> http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/c/cclib-data/
> which is meant for non-free and has the remaining data and test scripts.
> 
> Does this look OK?

I took a look now, and found a few issues:

1. Packages in main (e.g. cclib) must not Depend on or Recommend
packages in non-main, but you can put a Suggests: cclib-data to hint
users and graphical package managers.  This still means cclib-data will
not be installed along python-cclib for a regular apt-get or aptitude
install run.

Possibly cclib could print out a warning that cclib-data is not present
and additionally (if run on a Debian system), point users to the
cclib-data package in non-free.

2. The section for cclib-data should be non-free/science rather than
just science.  Note how the package ended up under debian/pool/main on
mentors.debian.net, not debian/pool/non-free.

3. The Depends: python-cclib (= 1.0.1-1) in cclib-data should probably
be relaxed a bit.  I guess it works, but is there any interface-like
dependency between the both?   Just depending on python-cclib (or
possibly python-cclib (>= 1.0.1) or something might be enough and could
avoid upgrade issues later on (e.g. if a user removes non-free from
their sources.list again for some reason, and apt/aptitude refuse to
upgrade cclib because a stale cclib-data package still depends on the
exact earlier version).

4. You could add "(python module)" and "(data files)" or something to
the short descriptions of python-cclib and cclib-data to make it clearer
what the difference is to the main cclib package.

5. What does the "noninteractive use" in "This package contains helper
scripts for noninteractive use." mean?  Does python-cclib have helper
scripts for interactive use?  Or just that those scripts are
noninteractive, and there are no others?  In that case, maye "for end
users" or something might be clearer.

6. The fix_setup.patch patch from cclib ended up in cclib-data as well
as debian/patches/debian-changes-1.0.1-1, was this intentional?  If so,
I suggest renaming it to fix_setup.patch as well, as the
debian-changes-* patches are auto-generated by dpkg-dev.

7. I get a build failure for cclib, if I build it in a (hopefully)
current unstable environment:

/bin/sh: python2.7: not found

I get this:

nighthawk~/build$ pyversions -vs
2.6 2.7

I am not a python build expert, but either you have to specify both
currently supported python versions (python2.6 and python2.7) as
Build-Depends, or you just build for the default version (2.6 currently)
with pyversions -vd.


That's all I saw at a first glance, will try to take another look later.


Cheers,

Michael