[Pkg-javascript-devel] Javascript team policy and rejection of node-three binary package

[Pirate Praveen]

[As suggested by Ian Jackson on -devel] [0]

Hi,

Javascript maintainers team have evolved a policy for javascript
packages and it is available at https://wiki.debian.org/Javascript/Policy

Its last point says,
5. should generate a node-foo binary package if the script is usable
also for Nodejs

But ftp masters rejected the last upload [1] which added node-three
binary package to three.js source package. There was also a similar
demand earlier about handlebars package [2] but was accepted by another
ftp master. I think the policy is good and request debian policy team to
endorse it.

The advantages of creating different binary packages (hope others in the
team can add any points I missed):

1. Node.js has standard locations for discovering installed packages
which is different from browser targeted javascript libraries.

Node.js expects pure js modules to be installed at /usr/lib/nodejs but
javascript libraries are installed at /usr/share/javascript

2. Dependency on nodejs is required only during build or when other
Node.js modules depend on it. a browser targeted library does not need
to depend on nodejs package.

If you take example of node-handlebars source package, libjs-handlebars
is targeted at browsers and does not need to declare a dependency on
nodejs. But handlebars package need nodejs to run. If there is only a
single binary package, nodejs will get installed unnecessarily.

[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/03/msg00063.html
[1]
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-javascript-devel/2018-February/025121.html
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=837467#22

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