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List:       debian-devel
Subject:    Re: conflicts between Debian's and upstream's Debian package
From:       Neil Williams <codehelp () debian ! org>
Date:       2015-02-21 11:54:53
Message-ID: 20150221115453.6f0d666a () sylvester ! codehelp
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On Fri, 20 Feb 2015 19:31:49 +0100
Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 05:53:27PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > If the Debian packages are not as good as the upstream ones, such
> > that you end up having to use the upstream ones for some reason,
> > then that also seems like a bug. If you can help the Debian
> > maintainer to fix that bug (e.g. by getting newer upstream versions
> > into experimental, or by fixing deficiencies of the packaging that
> > are done better upstream, or whatever), problem also solved.
> 
> There's only one experimental, the upstream can have more branches. 

If the will is there, packages which would be suitable for experimental
(with a rebuild/re-signing) can be pushed to an upstream repo - yes,
you lose the benefits of mirrors and buildds etc. but it can work and
it's not an excuse for making "bad" packages or packages which fail to
inter-operate with the versions already in Debian.

> During Debian freeze, an upstream may offer for example:
> * the newest release
> * upcoming beta branch
> * trunk
> 
> Another reason is that the latter two will often have nightly builds.
> You can't expect a Debian maintainer to make uploads to experimental
> daily, while it's easy for an upstream script to do that.

.. and the upstream script can just as easily put the package into a
suitable repository which is easy to use with apt-pinning. There aren't
many users who will upgrade the same package every day either, so it's
not as if the lack of mirrors is going to be much of a problem.

Echoing Simon's response - in all reasonable cases, there are steps that
upstream and Debian can take so that their packages use the same
package names and work nicely with together - that includes working
with the Debian versions of the same upstream. The technical issues can
be fixed with bug reports. It's only if there is a particularly toxic
social relationship between Debian and upstream that a package could
warrant being renamed to actively conflict with the name used upstream.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/


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