Bug#762638: missing source: Configure

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 08:52:14AM +0200, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 11:58:09PM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> > metaconfig is meant to be run according to this recipe:
> > 
> > http://perl5.git.perl.org/metaconfig.git/blob/HEAD:/README
> > 
> > it won't be a perfect match, as manual patching of the file is
> > allowed (see the comments) and indeed we patch Configure in the
> > Debian package.
> 
> Yes, I figured that there is a metaconfig.git that is used to generate
> Configure. I observed that it is not included in the Debian archive or
> only in a very diverged form. So from a Debian archive point of view the
> source is not available.
> 
> This is very similar to how we currently handle compressed javascript.
> Many javascript libraries are distributed under a BSD-ish license. The
> compressed javascript files most often include a reference for obtaining
> the source. Still it is generally not acceptable to not include their
> exact source in the source package.
> 
> Even though we can and do patch Configure, for the modifications I would
> like to apply privately, it is not the preferred form for modification,
> because I would have to edit very many places that collapse to fewer
> places in metaconfig.
> 
> > We could certainly document this better (in README.source) but I am
> > not convinced that this deserves RC severity.
> 
> It's you who makes the call about what is RC in perl , but I still think that it
> should be RC as long as the perl source package does not contain the
> corresponding metaconfig source (even if it is not used during build).
> That can be as easy as adding a .orig-metaconfig.tar.bz2 to the source
> package.
> 
> I argue that documenting how to regenerate Configure is not enough. The
> documentation is already there (albeit a bit non-obvious). What is
> missing is the source.

Yep, agree about all of this. I'll contact upstream in the first
instance to find out a bit about why the metaconfig sources for the
perl package are kept in a separate location.

Cheers,
Dominic.