packaging policy

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 03:05:18PM +0200, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
>Am 26.04.2010 14:43, schrieb Jonas Smedegaard:

>>I seem to recall others happy to use CDBS as well.
>
>Yes, of course. CDBS is widely used and accepted.

What I meant to say was that I seem to recall other _in_this_team_ happy 
to use CDBS as well.  As Reinhard pointed out too.


>It is just that we wanted to agree upon a packaging style that we as a 
>team can recommend to new contributors.

What I questioned was a wording by Benjamin Drung that could only (to 
me) be interpreted as "in this team we are phasing out CDBS - new 
packages must use dh7 while older ones need not be converted right now".  
I still question that.

I do not find that the wording is an attack on me or my personal style 
of packaging, but rather that it is narrowing the options of packaging.

Yes, I agree that new contributors are helped by a set of best packaging 
practices. But I disagree that mandating specific tools are all helpful.

I was a new contributor too just a month or two ago, and I was helped by 
this team not being too restrictive.

What I would find the most helpful was to document main patterns of our 
actual packaging work: This would serve both as technical introductions 
for beginners and as social hinting for more experienced developers (we 
do want to attract both, right?).

Examples:

   * we do code review, so please commit in sensible chunks
   * most of us use short-form dh7, some use CDBS
   * we use git-buildpackage with separate DEP3-hinted patches

With the above, I bet new contributors would choose short-form dh7 
unless already decided on CDBS, simply because we clearly describe how 
likely it is to get help using either style.  Similarly a newcomer would 
probably think twice before insisting on using e.g. Darcs since that 
would be alien to the team (no matter if some in the team use Darcs in 
some other contexts).


   - Jonas

-- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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