[Pkg-zsh-devel] Packaging best practice when upstream git contains more directory levels than the upstream tarball?

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Enrico,

Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > Upstream tarballs are preferable because:
> > 
> > * It's use is recommended in the Developer Reference
> 
> recommended essentially means optional.

Optional, yes, but still a recommendation, not just a suggestion.

> > * Distributions which build the software on package/port installation
> >   time (like e.g. FreeBSD and Gentoo) rely a lot on the Debian
> >   mirrors -- but only if we use the original upstream tarball.(*)
> 
> FreeBSD and Gentoo have their own mirror infrastructures,

Yeah, but they don't distribute the source code for all their
ports/ebuilds via their own infrastructure, just that code they can't
get from elsewhere. Instead they prefer to rely on upstream download
servers and other common servers which host the same source code like
like Debian, SourceForge, Ibiblio, etc.

> I don't think that they rely on Debian in any way.

Well, you're wrong. Why do you think FreeBSD ports have a special
macro for the case that a port's source code can be obtained from any
Debian mirror?

Have a look at
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/makefile-distfiles.html#AEN1521

I have less experience with Gentoo than with FreeBSD, but AFAIK
ebuilds work similar.

And I remember that the Gentoo maintainers of a software I package for
Debian has mentioned[1] on the upstream mailing list that they prefer
_not_ having to put the source code tar balls on some Gentoo
infrastructure.

  [1] https://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/conkeror/2010-September/002086.html

> > * They may include more files you possibly need for using
> >   automake/autoconf foo or to rebuild other stuff which is prebuilt in
> >   the official upstream tarball.(**)
> 
> That's one of the reasons I don't like upstream tarballs at all,
> if an usable VCS repo is available.

>From my experience upstream tar balls without the necessary files for
autoreconf are a quite seldom (and unfortunate) case where talking to
upstream may help.

> I usually regenerate everything (at least the autocrap stuff) and
> therefore want all those files out of the way first.

dh-autoreconf does a good job there, especially also if building from
a git repo and you don't want to do a git checkout after every build
to get back to the same state as before the build.

> Can't we build packages *directly* from an git tag without having
> an upstream/orig tarball at all ?

There's an experimental Debian source package format "3.0 (git)" which
IIRC does something like this. Don't know any details, though.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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