[debian-mysql] modernizing debian/rules

Clint Byrum clint at ubuntu.com
Fri Apr 20 18:20:46 UTC 2012


Excerpts from Olaf van der Spek's message of Fri Apr 20 04:11:05 -0700 2012:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Nicholas Bamber <nicholas at periapt.co.uk> wrote:
> > Err .. so is anyone looking at modernizing debian/rules now?
> 
> Unlikely
> What's 'wrong' with current rules?
> 

The current rules file is extremely explicit about almost everything
it does. Also dh_movefiles is quite a bit more painful to use than
dh_install, and lacks --fail-missing, which I think a package as important
as MySQL needs to make use of.

Every policy change or best practice change that gets pushed into
debhelper as a new tool/sequence, must also be duplicated in the mysql
packaging.

I'd like to modernize with a DH7 style rules file. I'd also like to gather
the bits that are common to the MariaDB packages and Percona Server
packages (not in Debian yet) and put those into a helper of some kind
so that we're not all running around chasing the same packaging bugs.
I've spoken with a few of the upstream people about this and I think we
can get this done as long as everybody chips in.

Another thing to discuss which is only slightly related to the rules
file is to ask why we are doing minor-version source package names. I
understand that transitions, in the past, needed this. However, IMO
now we should just have a 'mysql' source package and use experimental
to prepare transitions when a new major release is available. I can't
imagine a time where we want to ship *two* major versions of mysql in
the same release of Debian.



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