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

[Ian Jackson]

Axel Beckert writes ("Re: Packaging best practice when upstream git contains more directory levels than the upstream tarball?"):
> Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > [someone:]
> > > * 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.

This is all very flattering, but it is not the purpose of the Debian
archive to provide a general repository for upstream sources for
everyone in the universe to use.

I don't think we should go out of our way to preserve upstream
tarballs _just for this reason_.  There are other reasons which
upstream tarballs are useful, but nowadays many upstreams aren't even
bothering with tarballs or if they do they are annoying in some way or
other (for example, containing different contents to the vcs is
annoying because you can't easily try a snapshot from the upstream
vcs).

Ian.