Mail from the Ubuntu mame MOTU

[Cesare Falco]

Hello again Jordi and all!

As I haven't tried a mess build yet, I don't know why this is needed. Why
> do you need to build mame first, then mess? Can't you setup the build at
> the beginning and build both at the same time? Wouldn't that just create
> two different binaries?
>
the source tree in Mess tarball has some directories in common with Mame.
I don't remember whether overwrites occur (I had to halt the Mess thing for
a while due to lack of time), btw I chose to make it short and build them in
turn.  I'll have a closer look when I'm back home.

The problem with this detailed handling of debian/copyright is the pain in
> the ass it is to maintain properly. Right now, Manu is doing an awesome
> job registering the new files, but are we checking changes to already
> registered files? Are we removing files that get removed from the
> distribution? If we don't find a way to make this easier to maintain,
> it'll be a nightmare... :/
>
don't tell me. :o
It nearly drove me crazy during this years, and I must admit I probably
missed something at some point.
I thought about it a lot, we can take for granted what the Mame/Mess team
say or we can write some kind of parsing tool. I see no other ways. :(


> Yes, or maybe even a diversion, but probably an alternative is the optimal
> way. It's silly, because it means providing an alternative for the very
> same thing. Or, another proposal, just stick mess tools in mame-tools and
> make it provide mess-tools. Are there many new tools in mess?
>
at present there are 2, plus the one related to both.

Should we chose to make a single mame-tools package, I'd see no need
for providing mess-tools, as it doesn't really exist yet. ;)
We could just making mess suggest mame-tools, couldn't we?


> > 8 more IIRC.  If update-alternatives can't do, I'd rather prefer this to
> > "direct" dependecy between *-tools packages, not so neat IMHO.
>
> Given they are so closely related, I'd prefer the "one package for both"
> thing, but I admit I've never come across this situation.
>
Yeah, I think it's a really peculiar one.

Let's sum up:
* there's a number of tools provided, only one related to both Mame
    and Mess but we can't be sure they won't be more in the future
* we have collected many thoughts on how to manage this so far:
   + using alternatives, mess-tools depends on mame tools
     - pros: tools are clearly linked to the corresponding emulator
     - cons: the same binary (could be more) repeated; silly way to use
          alternatives; a mess (no pun intended ;) ), should a mess tool
          become related to mame too
   + mess-tools and mame-tools are meta-packages, depending on
       multiple packages, one for each tool
     - pros: the same as above
     - cons: lots of binary packages
   + all tools are in a single mame-tools package
     - pros: probably easier to maintain in the future; no redundancy
     - cons: the user can't tell which is which anymore

I'm uncertain. I guess I still need some thinking on this. ;)


>
> > I've (probably... ;) ) managed to register to Alioth and asked for
> > membership in the Debian Games group. This according to Manu should
> > grant me access to the git repository. In the meantime, is it permitted
> > to post my debian/rules file as an attachment to the list?
>
> Absolutely! I have pushed my stashed changes to the repo, but you're free
> to improve it if needed.
>
great!
I'm attaching my full debian dir. It's only ~30k bzipped so I hope it won't
hurt
anyone. Please note the contrib files. I submitted the man pages upstream,
but they're not been included in the main tree AFAIK.


>
> Now, my idea is to setup a few symlinks to make mess appear in the mame
> usual tree so it can get compiled. Dunno if Cesare had another idea or
> approach.
>
I did something different (see above), but your idea could be better than
mine.
We need to check whether file/dir clashing occurs first. ;)

Cheers!
Cesare.
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