[DRE-maint] Collaborating on Debian packaging

[Hongli Lai]

Dear Ruby Extras Maintainers,

I am one of the developers behind Phusion Passenger, for which you
have made a package named "ruby-passenger". Thank you for your efforts
on packaging Phusion Passenger so far.

I'm reaching out to you to see whether we can collaborate better in
this area. We would like our users to be able to obtain up-to-date
Debian packages as soon as they can, ideally minutes after an official
source release. To reach this goal, we've already setup the following:

- The official git repository now contains Debian packaging scripts.
These scripts support multiple distributions from a single source, by
utilizing a preprocessor to generate distribution-specific Debian
source packages. The scripts are always kept up to date with main
development.
- An automated set of tests check, after each commit, whether the
Debian packaging scripts still work and whether they generate a valid
and usable Phusion Passenger installation. If something breaks, we're
notified immediately.

And finally, something we're still working on: an automated package
building server. It should build Debian packages for end users and for
multiple distributions immediately after we push a git tag.

Once this is all in place, there will no longer be a separate
packaging and patching phase. Every single commit can immediately be
built into usable Debian packages. Maybe, on one day, you guys can setup an
automated task that automatically builds your own packages immediately
after we release a source release. That way your users will experience
minimal packaging delay.

I'd like to see better collaboration between us. Specifically, I'd like to:
- ...know whether our current packaging scripts correctly conform to
Debian guidelines.
- ...see any packaging changes and patches to be submitted to us,
instead of keeping Debian-specific patches around.
- ...have the package renamed. It was first called "passenger", but it
has been renamed to "ruby-passenger" due to recent Ruby guidelines.
However, Phusion Passenger is no longer just about Ruby. Nowadays it
has become a fully polyglot application server, with support for
Python and Node.js as well. I'd like to rename it back to "passenger"
so that users don't have the wrong expectations.

You can review our packaging scripts here:
https://github.com/phusion/passenger/tree/master/debian.template

With kind regards,
Hongli Lai

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