[Tts-project] Versioning of mbrola-LANG packages (Was: Maintaining mbrola-LANG packages in tts-team team?)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi again,

Am Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 11:00:30PM +0100 schrieb Samuel Thibault:
> > OK, this absolutely breaks my workflow but I try to adapt to this
> > requirement.
> 
> Thanks for bearing with it, that will be helpful..

You are welcome.
 
> > I adopted the layout of the Haskell team and created
> > 
> >    https://salsa.debian.org/tts-team/mbrola-voices
> > 
> > Hope the README.md makes some sense.
> 
> Indeed, thanks for adapting from Haskell!

Thank you for confirming.  When thinking about fetching upstream source
which I usually like to provide I think watch files are hard to do.
Thus I came up with some get-orig-source script

   https://salsa.debian.org/tts-team/mbrola-voices/-/blob/master/get-orig-source?ref_type=heads

I realised while the actual data file is the same in alls packages I
checked the metadata are not.  For instance we have

--- old/mbrola-voices/p/mbrola-ar1/README.txt  2018-04-18 21:25:32.000000000 +0200
+++ new/mbrola-voices/p/mbrola-ar1/README.txt  2026-02-24 21:34:51.000000000 +0100
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@
 If  you  have  not copied   the MBROLA software   yet,  please consult
 the MBROLA project homepage and get it:
 
-        http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis
+        https://github.com/numediart/MBROLA/
 
 Copy ar1.zip into your target directory and unzip it : 
 
@@ -168,5 +168,5 @@
 31, bvd Dolez, B-7000 Mons, Belgium
 tel: +32 65 374133  fax:374129            
 email : mbrola at tcts.fpms.ac.be
-web   : http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis
+web   : https://github.com/numediart/MBROLA/
 --------------------------------------------------------------


Once I'm at it I think it makes sense to refresh the source package as
well to update this kind of metadata.


Now comes my question:  The UDD query

  udd=> select distinct source, version from sources where source like 'mbrola-%' and release = 'sid' order by version;

uncovers quite a number of different versioning schemes.  The
get-orig-source script intended to keep the leading version number as
long as it is no date string.  I wonder where such versions might
come from.  If there is no official version numbering I think it
makes sense to settle with either

   20200331.fe05a0c-1

or even only

   20200331-1

(since chances for multiple commits on one day are pretty low) for *all*
mbrola-LANG packages.  This version would be informative for our users
and IMHO reflects the reality better than the current version numbers we
have.  What do you think?  If you agree, what version scheme (including
commit ID or without it) would you prefer?
 
> > Any comments whether all this might make sense are really welcome.
> > If you think this is the way to go I will prepare the first 3-5
> > packages there in Git and let you comment on this before doing the
> > first upload.
> 
> debian-af1 looks good, thanks!

Once we found some agreement about the version numbers I will start
doing team uploads step by step if you agree.

Kind regards
   Andreas. 

-- 
https://fam-tille.de