[tex-live] Re: Packaging SourceFiles for TeX live/Debian

[Frank Küster]

Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I would like to hear your suggestions concerning packaging the
> SourceFiles into the respective Debian packages.
>
> In the TPMs we have the part describing the SourceFiles.
>
> ATM all these source files are installed into /usr/share/texmf/source/..
>
> lintian (integrity checking tool for debian packages) finds a whole lot
> of errors and warnings in these source files
> (included binary files in arch=all packages,

What files are these?  Either they are not in fact
architecture-dependent, than they deserve a lintian override, or they
are, then they shouldn't be in an arch=all package.

> Thus my question is:
>
> How should I cope with these errors:
> - Leave the source stuff completely out (out of source package and
>   binary package, it is not actually used for building since TeX live
>   includes already everything prepared).

I would prefer to keep it in the source package.  This makes it much
more usefull - you can actually use it, e.g., to prepare patches to
submit to the package authors, which is hard with a generated *.sty
file.  And we also had bug reports that asked whether we couldn't build
tetex-base from the dtx files, well that'd make up a nice circular
build-dependency, but in principle the wish is understandable.

> - Leave the source stuff out of the binary package only

For teTeX, we have a separate tetex-src package that installs the dtx
files etc.

> - Leave it in source and binary, and ignore lintian errors

If there are good reasons to ignore them, yes.  Scripts with wrong paths
in /usr/share/texmf/source, i.e. that aren't meant to be run on the
system, are a good reason, I'd say.

> - Leave it in source and binary and try to hack all errors

That could be the ultimate goal (and would proably lead to more portable
scripts on CTAN), but it isn't necessary before uploading to Debian.  It
isn't even necessary before releasing as part of Debian stable.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer