Should example scripts be compressed?

[Nicholas Bamber]

I reckon a reasib#nably competent lawyer could argue that either 
viewpoint is mandated by sections 12.3 and 12.6 of the Debian policy. I 
would be quite happy to raise a bug report against debian -policy asking 
for an exception where utility to the end user is deemed to outweigh the 
extra disk space. I wouldn't really expect it to go anywhere though.

On 15/03/11 20:00, gregor herrmann wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:11:18 +0000, Nicholas Bamber wrote:
>
>> Jawnsy's observations
>> ---------------------
>> As far as I can see Jawnsy has made the following observations:
>> 1.) Currently the default practice is to compress.
>> 2.) The existing packages would have to be updated.
>> 3.) The build infrastructure would have to be modified.
>
> Additional info: Examples (as a subset of /usr/share/doc/<pkg>) are
> not compressed "just for fun" but because policy 12.3 says: "Any
> additional documentation ... should be
> ... compressed with gzip -9 unless it is small."
> (Interestingly 12.6 doesn't talk about compression ...)
>
> "Small" is of course rather vague, and that's where dh_compress' 4k
> come from as an arbitrary limit.
>
>> Periapt's reply
>> ---------------
>> 1.) The default practice is not necessarily optimal.
>
> I agree in general. As a user I was more than once annoyed about
> having to take extra steps.
> As a maintainer I have sometimes installed examples uncompressed when
> I thought it makes sense in that case (and not when I didn't care
> enough in the specific case).
>
>> 2.) I think this is a subtle but definite improvement. A mass update
>> would not be required.
>
> Agreed. If we decide to prefer/recommend/allow... uncompressed
> examples this can be done when updating packages, and by those whoe
> care about it.
>
>> 3.) Absolutely, it is the goal of this group to automate as much as
>> possible. However if asked , I am sure that  Joey Hess would say
>
> I'd rather ask him than guess about his reply :)
>
>
> Cheers,
> gregor
>
>
>
>
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