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Re: dchanges and changes file format



Andy Guy writes ("dchanges and changes file format"):
...
> 2. Source package names - maintainers should be associated with them
> as well as the binary packages.  These mostly overlap binary package
> names but some don't (ncurses).  I am not sure if the bug system
> already manages this?

There's nothing to do it at the moment, but it could be arranged
easily enough.

> 3. Problems of registering maintainers for source/binarys over
> multiple architectures.

I think we need a single maintainer for each package.  If they are
unresponsive to bug reports then the maintainer for another
architecture can easily take it over.

Most bugs will be architecture-independent, I think.

> 4. Proper use of the Source: field in packages. ncurses binary
> packages fail to include a proper source field (and probably so do
> others, I was using ncurses to test the program); pine source produces
> a pico binary package with a different version - how do we deal with
> this?  I suggest that the Source: field be composed of two parts,
> first the source package name and second the source package version.
> If the Source field is absent, then the source name and version are
> the same as the binary package.  If the Source: field contains a
> single word, it is the source name, the source version is the same as
> the binary version, if the Source: field contains two words (ie space
> seperated) the second is the source package version.  This allows one
> to automatically find the source package associated with any binary
> package.  Dpkg will already acccept this (and nothing really uses the
> Source: field at the momemt).  So for pico - "Source: pine 3.91"

This seems to be an eminently sensible and straightforward scheme.

...
> Filename format
> ===============
> 
> The new filename format would be:
> 
> <pkgname>--<version>[--<arch>]--<ext>
> 
> where <version> includes the debian revision.
> 
> All of <pkgname> <version> <arch> <ext> shouldn't include '--'. 

Is there any reason why the <arch> and <ext> can't be separated by
dots instead ?  This would make it look a bit more like the filenames
people are used to seeing.  It will also make it less likely that
programs which try to guess file type by extension and expect `.'s
will be confused.  (OK, these would be bad programs in many cases, but
it's silly to break with a convention like this unless necessary.)

Furthermore, it is necessary for the `.deb' extension for debian
binary files to be preserved so that dselect can find them, or I have
to change dselect, and in any case leaving the .deb on makes things
more consistent with the msdos filenames.

> Source files and source diff files:
> 
> These should not include the <arch> component.
> 
> eg: ncurses--1.9.8a-4--tar.gz
>     ncurses--1.9.8a-4--diff.gz

Don't forget that I'm proposing to merge the source into a single
tarfile.  This tarfile will not contain the package name in an
easy-to-extract way, but the (package name + version number) and
(revision number) will be extractable separately if you need to do
this.

...
...
> Files: one line per file uploaded:
> 
>  <md5sum> <size> <section> <filename> 
> 
> <section> is the section into which the file should be placed: eg
> misc, base, net etc, also "special" this means the file dosn't belong
> in either the source or binary directory and needs the attention of
> the distribution maintainer (eg this would be used when Ian J. uploads
> dpkg--1.1.3--nondebin.tar.gz which should go somewhere else).

You need to pick a different key to `special' for this purpose, or we
can't ever decide to call a section `special' ...

Ian.