feedback for libdvdcss-pkg

[Dmitry Smirnov]

Hi Fabian,

Thank you for taking time and sharing your thoughts.

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:10:26 Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> I just had a short look, but to me this looks overly complicated. Why
> do we have to download the sources and build them into a separate
> package and then install this one - all that mixed with debconf
> interaction?

I tried to explain some of the reasons in README.Debian.

First of all I believe everything we install should be under package 
management control. There are number of libdvdcss2 packages around, notably 
from deb-multimedia and the idea is not to conflict with them by to take over.

Secondly I want package to be upgradable and allow to remove it using normal 
package management tools. This is the main idea.

Debconf is very important to notify user about the implications and to allow 
to disable package re-building.


> Why not download the sources, check integrity, compile
> them and install them - just like flashplugin-nonfree or
> ttf-mscorefonts-installer do?

Because I don't like how they're doing it. :(
If I have package I can archive it, bring to another computer with no 
internet, see what's installed and there, check integrity (debsums) etc. There 
are many advantages that package management system provides. 


> Apart from this:
> 
> - Each mention of the word "illegal" *must* disappear!

Could you suggest a better wording please? 
How to express better why we're not shipping from main repository and why 
we're asking for user's discression to build the package?


> - Please no leading commas in debian/control (cosmetic).

There are so many opinions on this. I found this notation most useful for 
revision control. Otherwise you'll need trailing commas that tend to annoy 
more people for reasons I couldn't understand. I prefer practical over 
cosmetic. IMHO this not just looks good but also easy to work with.


> - You have both "dh_makeshlibs -V" in rules and a symbols file,
>    that's redundant.

Of course, thank you. :) Committed.


> - Why did you modify the changelog? We already worked on libdvdcss
>    packaging and have properly documented that in this file.

Sorry, I don't quite follow you...
I modify changelog to inject '~local' to version of generated package.
This is in order to mark local package as such.

If you meant changelog of libdvdcss as a whole (not the version part) I can 
explain. Historically I forked libdvdcss from deb-multimedia and incorporated 
it before I've noticed that libdvdcss2 was also packaged here.

I wrote to Andres Mejia asking for permission to merge our work but he didn't 
reply yet. Anyway at the moment it suits to have guest package source embedded 
as proof of concept. I'm sure eventually we'll de-duplicate.


> - We should maybe install NEWS as changelog.

Could you be more specific please?
Do you mean to embed guest package changelog to host package NEWS or to use 
NEWS to articulate the fact that we're building package on client side?

Wouldn't it be unnecessary complicated?


> - Symbol visibility support is now included upstream, we should
>    include this patch instead.

But the patch is there, properly annotated. I'm afraid I don't quite follow 
you again.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Dmitry.