[Pkg-zsh-devel] Differences between git repo and official tar balls: Are they still relevant?

[Daniel Shahaf]

Axel Beckert wrote on Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 01:22:22 +0100:
> Hi Daniel,
> 
> Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> > Axel Beckert wrote on Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 03:04:36 +0100:
> > > now that pws started signing upstream tar balls and I implemented
> > > verifying these signatures in
> > > https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/zsh.git/commit/?id=e6d23bf3
> > > we should have a look if we still need to generate fake upstream tar
> > > balls from git.
> > ...
> > > What do you think?
> > 
> > I'm curious: wouldn't it be simpler to teach git-orig-source to verify
> > the signed git tag (and continue using a 'git archive' of the upstream
> > tag) than to maintain a list of all the generated files that need to be
> > moved away and back again?  What exactly is gained by using the upstream
> > tarball (over using the signed tag)?
> 
> Actually being able to use the upstream tarball is the goal. :-)
> 
> It's preferred in Debian to use upstream tar balls whereever possible.

Sure.  But I was assuming there was some rationale behind this rule, and
I wondered whether that rationale applied in the present situation,
since there is little practical difference between the tarball and the
git tag: both of them represent a file tree that's cryptographically
tied to pws.  (But one of them contains generated files and one
doesn't.)

> Not having to generate a fake .orig.tar.xz would be one gain, also
> less work for us when packaging a new upstream release.
> 
> IIRC the main reason for not using the zsh upstream tar ball was that
> 
> * we don't want to use pre-generated documentation due to different
>   paths than we passed to ./configure, but
> * missing files to regenerate this documentation with the proper
>   paths.
> 
> The latter issue seems gone.
> 
> Another side-story is that Ubuntu e.g. rapes our zsh package and uses
> the upstream tar ball to not have to regenerate the documentation
> (because they don't want to maintain the yodl package in main while
> they want zsh in main -- long story, many bug reports on Launchpad).
> 
> Minimizing the diff to Ubuntu would be another gain.

Thanks for the additional background and details.

Cheers,

Daniel

> 		Regards, Axel