[pkg-php-pear] Proposed release goal: PEAR package building using pkg-php-tools

[Niels Thykier]

On 2013-09-15 15:53, Mathieu Parent (Debian) wrote:
> Hi release team,
> 

Hi,

> I (re-)propose the following Jessie release goal.
> 

Thanks for your interest in improving Jessie by proposing this Release Goal.

> This goal is on good shape already, thanks to the great pkg-php-pear
> team, but it will gain visibility by being more official.
> 
> = PEAR package building using pkg-php-tools =
> == Goal description ==
> 
> pkg-php-tools was introduced in Debian wheezy. It considerably eases
> the building of PEAR packages (PHP packages).
> 
> == Wiki page ==
> See https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/pkg-php-tools
> 
> == Advocates ==
> 
>  * Mathieu Parent (sathieu at debian.org)
>  * Thomas Goirand (zigo at debian.org)
>  * Thijs Kinkhorst (thijs at debian.org)
> 
> == Volunteers ==
> 
>  * Prach Pongpanich (prachpub at gmail.com)
> 

While it is an admirable goal and I would definitely recommend you
continue working towards it, I get a feeling this is not suitable as
Release Goal.

My primary concern is that we cannot impose maintainers to use a certain
build helper.  If I was to take your proposal and replace pkg-php-tools
with CDBS or even just dh7 (and "PEAR packages" with "$type packages") I
am pretty sure it would cause nothing short of a riot[1].

Now, if the packages are limited to packages maintained by the PHP Pear
team, then you do not need a release goal.  If the team agrees on this,
then you can "just" go ahead and do it.
  In this case, it would then probably also fail the "Affect more than
just one set of packages"-requirement.

~Niels

[1] Example: "All essential packages should be build by using CDBS or dh7".