[kpfleming@digium.com: debian/ in asterisk tarball]

[Chris Halls]

On Wednesday 03 Aug 2005 08:14, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> [forgot to CC Kevin. Please CC replies to him as well]
ok

> One problem I see with that is that including a debian/ subdirectory in
> the CVS will break the assumptions of standard debian build process that
> assumes the debian diff only adds files to /debian .

There are certainly potential issues with having a debian directory in an 
upstream tarball but I see it as more of a tradeoff of 
advantages/disadvantages than a complete breakage.  Many projects do include 
a debian directory in their CVS trees, for example KDE.

The standard debian build process does not assume that the diff only adds 
files to debain - it is capable of modifying existing files in debian.  The 
problem is that you cannot delete a file using the diff.  The best you can do 
using diff is to patch the file to be empty.

This means that if the CVS debian/ directory gets a long way out of sync with 
the official debian packaging, it can be a problem for the debian maintainer 
to correct this while using official upstream release tarballs, especially 
when they do not have write access to the CVS repository.

In any case, the problem only applies if the upstream tarball used in the 
packages actually contains the debian/ directory.  Since you are only talking 
about packaging from CVS, one solution is simply to agree not to include the 
debian/ directory in the official release tarballs.  An automake-based build 
system could do this automatically in the dist target, but I think this would 
have to be done by hand by the release builder for asterisk.

Another solution is to repack the release tarball without the debian 
directory.  This means you cannot verify the checksum of the tarball in 
debian using upstream's checksums, but debian does include its own checksums 
and in fact the current debian packaging already repacks the tarball to 
remove the MOH stuff.

Personally, I would like to be able to check out asterisk and have a debian 
directory included.  But that would need someone to keep an eye on the 
directory in the asterisk CVS.  Perhaps another solution would be to keep 
that debian directory in the pkg-voip-maintainers archive and include a 
script in asterisk CVS to download that directory?

Chris