[pkg-php-pear] Let's reconsider the way Symfony2 Components are packaged for Debian

[Daniel Beyer]

Hi together

I'm especially addressing everyone listed as Uploader of a component of
Symfony2 I could find (sorry if you're on pkg-php-pear and get this
twice). But of course feedback from everybody else interested is
valuable and very much welcome.

I'm currently packaging Silex for Debian [1] and need quite a lot of
additional Symfony2 Components - at least if the tests Silex ships with
should be run during build time (as I intend to do).

I therefore took a look how Symfony2 Components are packaged for Debian
as of today and have some doubts about it:

1. Upstream obsoleted distribution via PEAR
Recently Fabien Potencier announced end of pear support in the Symfony
blog [2]. New versions are no longer released over the Symfony2 PEAR
channel. In an other post he explained his motivation doing so a bit
more in detail [3]. I took a quick look into each Symfony2 component
present so far in Debian and they all use dh_phppear.

2. Multiple source packages for a project released at a whole
Symfony2 Components are released and maintained at a whole [4]. In my
opinion it should be the same in Debian: Have each component of Symfony2
in a binary deb and let those been build from a single source package. I
see the following reasons doing so:
* It generates less work for the FTP Masters (or FTP Assistants)
* Coordination of what needs to be updated for a new upstream release is
much easier
* It generally makes maintaining Symfony2 in Debian less complicated
* We finally would have the whole Symfony2 Components in Debian and no
longer need to wait for single ones to be packaged

I for myself would happily delay my work on Silex in favor to work
together with you on this.

So, what's your opinion?


Greetings
Daniel


[1] http://bugs.debian.org/748834
[2] http://symfony.com/blog/end-of-pear-support-for-symfony
[3]
http://fabien.potencier.org/article/72/the-rise-of-composer-and-the-fall-of-pear
[4] https://github.com/symfony/symfony/