[Debichem-devel] VOTCA available on my PPA

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 08:38:27AM -0700, Christoph Junghans wrote:
> 2013/12/22 Michael Banck <mbanck at debian.org>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 02:55:04PM -0600, Christoph Junghans wrote:
> >> I finalize found the time to make the first steps to package VOTCA for Debian.
> >> The source/binary builds are available on
> >> <https://launchpad.net/~ottxor/+archive/votca>.
> >>
> >> Please have a look and help me to improve it, so that I can hand it
> >> over to debichem soon.
> >
> > I took a look at votca-tools now (as this is a Build-Depends for
> > votca-csg and has to be uploaded first).  I see the following issues:
> >
> > 1. The -dev package is named libvotca-tools2-dev, i.e. includes the
> > soversion.  This is discouraged (but unfortunately the library
> > maintainer's guide advocated it at least last time I looked), unless a
> > project is very widely used and switching all programs using it
> > immediately is not feasable (like for GTK1->GTK2, oder Qt4->Qt5). I
> > understand that Ubuntu ships it, but I would rather rename it to
> > libvotca-tools-dev and either let Ubuntu deal with it, or add
> > compatibility Replaces/Conflicts/Provides for it.
>
> Renaming is fine as it has only been released as PPA.
> So should we just rename the dev package or both?
 
Only the -dev package, the runtime library is required to carry the
soversion in the package name.

Another thing to consider if the package has not shipped in Ubuntu
proper so far would be to maybe start over with the Debian changelog,
but I leave that up to you.

> > 2. votca-tools ships a convenience copy of boost.  Either it needs to be
> > stripped off the tarball (i.e. the tarball needs to be repackaged), or
> > the boost license and copyright needs to be added to debian/copyright.
>
> VOTCA ships a pristine tarball already:
> https://votca.googlecode.com/files/votca-tools-1.2.3_pristine.tar.gz
> and on my PPA, I have used that one to create the debian package.
 
Ah, ok.  I think I saw that in passing a while back but by the time I
looked at the package I had forgotten about it.

> > Finally, I suggest adding an debian/upstream file with some metadata and
> > the prime publications, I can do that.
>
> Once we have converged, I will add the debian folder to our admin
> repository.

That is usually discouraged (if you mean the code repository on Google
code), as it makes it more difficult to add Debian changes on top of a
release, if they are required by a new Debian policy, e.g.  Also, it
makes it difficult to synchronize the Debian packaging with the regular
release.

The only exception are native packages, which are developped especially
for Debian, but even in that case, a lot of packages ship an upstream
source and the Debian diff.

So in practise, if an upstream tarball already contains a
debian/-directory, it is usually removed and replaced by the
debian.tar.gz from the source package.


Michael