[Pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers] request for review and upload of libfeedparser-ruby

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 03/12/05 at 11:53 +0000, Esteban Manchado Velázquez wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 02:55:36PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > On 30/11/05 at 12:02 +0000, Esteban Manchado Velázquez wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 09:21:27PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > libfeedparser-ruby is ready (from my POV) to be uploaded to Debian.
> > > > Could somebody review it and upload it if it's ok ? (I'm not a DD)
> > > 
> > >     I just reviewed it and it seems OK, but before uploading, I would like to
> > > ask: should I upload it as is (i.e. with a -dev package), or wait a little
> > > until we decide what to package, and the names of the packages? If I upload
> > > now and we change our mind, we will have a basically useless package in the
> > > archive, and I don't see the point of uploading _right now_, as opposed to in
> > > a week or so, when we have decided the package "structure".
> > 
> > We haven't reached a consensus about package structure, and I don't
> > think we will reach one in the near future.
> 
>     Why not? We just have to talk a bit more, we have just begun talking about
> it. And I don't think it's such a hard decision to make... (I only mean to
> decide what packages, and their names, not all the details about their
> contents)
> 
> > I personally think that examples and tests are neeed in a binary package,
> > and that they can't be in a -doc package since they aren't really
> > documentation.
> 
>     As for the examples, I don't think they eat so much space it will be worth
> splitting in another package, specially taking into account that the -doc
> package will weight like 1 or 2 Mbs. And if I choose to install the library
> documentation, I'll probably want a couple of examples as well...

That's why I proposed that tests, examples and doc go to a -dev package.
It seems this can be confusing, so I changed to a -doc package.

>     As for the tests, I still don't get why they should be into a binary
> package. The only thing I remember you said about it was that you wanted to be
> able to test all the packages regularly, but I don't see the need to have the
> tests live in some binary package. I mean, if you really care (as the package
> user) about having the package work correctly, simply download the sources
> and have the tests run. And I would _hate_ having my production servers make
> lots of tests everyday for no reason (specially when running stable), so I'm
> guessing here the tests would have to be somehow activated.

Another point in favor of unit tests in a binary package is that they
can often be helful as documentation: they provide good examples of how
to use the library, with which kind of arguments, etc... Therefore, I
think that the decision to include (or not include) tests in a binary
package should be a per-package (or per-maintainer) one.

I was never thinking of automatically running unit tests on all systems
which have the package installed.

>     I mean, most users don't care about package testing, and they probably
> won't be filing bug reports, why not let the maintainers make the tests, in
> such a way that is easy, for interested users, set them up themselves? And I'm
> not even sure that letting the users test them will enhance the quality of the
> packages, because they're running the same tests as the maintainer, but
> anyway...

What about other maintainers (which would be interested in monitoring
the quality of ruby packages as a whole), or maintainers of Debian
derivatives ?

> > The best is to pospone our decision about structure until the Ubuntu
> > Automated Tests proposal starts releasing some code, so we know what we
> > can do. This will probably happen in the next two or three months.
> 
>     I don't see any connection here. One decision is whether we want package
> tests in the binary packages, and another one altogether is _how_ are we
> going to make those tests...
> 
> > >     I have no problems uploading it without the -dev package, though, as we
> > > know that the rest are definitive names...
> > 
> > Please do so. We could always Confict the -dev package in a later
> > release.
> 
>     I know, but that will bring useless packages to the archive, and I don't
> want FTP masters get angry with _me_ :-) Unless, of course, there is some
> special reason to upload them now...

I renamed libfeedparser-ruby1.8-dev to libfeedparser-ruby-doc (note the
ruby-version-independance). I didn't change the content of the packages.
If we decide later that we don't want unit tests, we can just remove
them and keep the -doc package for rdoc & ri.

>     Please, the rest of the mailing list members, thread.join! :-)

We might need to thread.awake first ;)
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
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