[Debichem-devel] VOTCA available on my PPA

[Christoph Junghans]

2013/12/23 Michael Banck <mbanck at debian.org>:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 08:38:27AM -0700, Christoph Junghans wrote:
>> 2013/12/22 Michael Banck <mbanck at debian.org>:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 02:55:04PM -0600, Christoph Junghans wrote:
>> >> I finalize found the time to make the first steps to package VOTCA for Debian.
>> >> The source/binary builds are available on
>> >> <https://launchpad.net/~ottxor/+archive/votca>.
>> >>
>> >> Please have a look and help me to improve it, so that I can hand it
>> >> over to debichem soon.
>> >
>> > I took a look at votca-tools now (as this is a Build-Depends for
>> > votca-csg and has to be uploaded first).  I see the following issues:
>> >
>> > 1. The -dev package is named libvotca-tools2-dev, i.e. includes the
>> > soversion.  This is discouraged (but unfortunately the library
>> > maintainer's guide advocated it at least last time I looked), unless a
>> > project is very widely used and switching all programs using it
>> > immediately is not feasable (like for GTK1->GTK2, oder Qt4->Qt5). I
>> > understand that Ubuntu ships it, but I would rather rename it to
>> > libvotca-tools-dev and either let Ubuntu deal with it, or add
>> > compatibility Replaces/Conflicts/Provides for it.
>>
>> Renaming is fine as it has only been released as PPA.
>> So should we just rename the dev package or both?
>
> Only the -dev package, the runtime library is required to carry the
> soversion in the package name.
Done.

>
> Another thing to consider if the package has not shipped in Ubuntu
> proper so far would be to maybe start over with the Debian changelog,
> but I leave that up to you.
Whatever you debian guys like, I am happy to drop the current changelog.

>
>> > 2. votca-tools ships a convenience copy of boost.  Either it needs to be
>> > stripped off the tarball (i.e. the tarball needs to be repackaged), or
>> > the boost license and copyright needs to be added to debian/copyright.
>>
>> VOTCA ships a pristine tarball already:
>> https://votca.googlecode.com/files/votca-tools-1.2.3_pristine.tar.gz
>> and on my PPA, I have used that one to create the debian package.
> Ah, ok.  I think I saw that in passing a while back but by the time I
> looked at the package I had forgotten about it.
Where would I note that in the debian files? The next release (1.3)
will not bundle boost anymore.

>> > Finally, I suggest adding an debian/upstream file with some metadata and
>> > the prime publications, I can do that.
>>
>> Once we have converged, I will add the debian folder to our admin
>> repository.
> That is usually discouraged (if you mean the code repository on Google
> code), as it makes it more difficult to add Debian changes on top of a
> release, if they are required by a new Debian policy, e.g.  Also, it
> makes it difficult to synchronize the Debian packaging with the regular
> release.
>
> The only exception are native packages, which are developped especially
> for Debian, but even in that case, a lot of packages ship an upstream
> source and the Debian diff.
Sorry, I misread, wrong direction of thought!
I added an upstream file with some fields in votca-{tools,csg}.

Cheers,

Christoph

>
> So in practise, if an upstream tarball already contains a
> debian/-directory, it is usually removed and replaced by the
> debian.tar.gz from the source package.
>
>
> Michael



-- 
Christoph Junghans
Web: http://www.compphys.de