Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

A poll is a good idea. Can you recommend a site that allows setting up a
poll?

Am Donnerstag, den 11.10.2012, 23:29 +0200 schrieb Matthias Klumpp:
> Hi!
> Have you considered making a poll for this? Because everyone will tell
> you a different oppinion...
> For me, I think: bzr-builddeb is specific to Bzr, if you don't use
> Bzr, it is useless. Instead, dh_make can be used to generate Debian
> templates quickly, so it might be useful for more people, even those
> not using Bzr.
> I use the Debian Git tools for packaging, I never touched the Bzr
> stuff, so I don't need it. I also don't need dh-make often, but it
> sometimes is useful.
> I can't give any hint, because I am just one developer, but I would
> probably prefer dh-make for the reason above.
> But if I would need to decide, I would probably suggest both and
> recommend none of them :-)
> Cheers,
> Matthias
>
> 2012/10/11 Benjamin Drung <bdrung@debian.org>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make in Debian? The current
> > situation is that packaging-dev recommends bzr-builddeb and suggests
> > dh-make. It was requested to drop bzr-builddeb from Recommends and add
> > dh-make [1]. The recommended packages of packaging-dev should be
> > recommended by most of the Debian developer and not just by the
> > maintainer of packaging-dev or one single bug reporter. Therefore I am
> > asking you: How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make? Should they be
> > recommended or just suggested by packaging-dev?
> >
> > [1] http://bugs.debian.org/688572
> >
> > --
> > Benjamin Drung
> > Debian & Ubuntu Developer


--
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

Hi Benjamin,

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 10:38:08PM +0200, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make in Debian? The current
> situation is that packaging-dev recommends bzr-builddeb and suggests
> dh-make. It was requested to drop bzr-builddeb from Recommends and add
> dh-make [1]. The recommended packages of packaging-dev should be
> recommended by most of the Debian developer and not just by the
> maintainer of packaging-dev or one single bug reporter.

I think this is a failing proposition. There are as many different
preferences about packaging, to the nearest order of magnitude, as there are
Debian developers. I'm fine with this package being one maintainer's
recommendations for some packages; I'm not at all ok with it being recast as
a blessed recommendation of the project, as I object to about a third of the
stuff in there.

> Therefore I am asking you: How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make?
> Should they be recommended or just suggested by packaging-dev?

dh-make isn't so relevant now that debhelper 7 exists. cp
/usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.tiny debian/rules && dch
--create, manually create debian/control and debian/copyright, and that's
about it.

bzr is the fourth most popular version control system in Debian according to
<http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/vcs-usage/>. If you're going to demote
bzr-builddeb (which doesn't bother me), I think you should also be demoting
svn-buildpackage, because svn is horrible and should die.

Cheers,
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> bzr is the fourth most popular version control system in Debian according to
> <http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/vcs-usage/>. If you're going to demote
> bzr-builddeb (which doesn't bother me), I think you should also be demoting
> svn-buildpackage, because svn is horrible and should die.

Well, you should also mention the numbers from this site. svn and git
are used about 20 and 40 times respectively more often than bzr for
packaging. Saying that bzr is popular is would be misleading
considering these numbers.

I actually heard of bzr-builddeb for the first time and my impression
always was that most packages using bzr are maintained by Ubuntu
developers.

In any case, the Recommends should be agnostic to the VCS being
used. Recommending dh_make is actually very sensible as it's always a
good start when packaging from scratch. I use it for all my packages
and gives a rough guideline for the packaging work.

Cheers,

Adrian

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

Am Donnerstag, den 11.10.2012, 14:38 -0700 schrieb Steve Langasek:
> Hi Benjamin,
>
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 10:38:08PM +0200, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> > How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make in Debian? The current
> > situation is that packaging-dev recommends bzr-builddeb and suggests
> > dh-make. It was requested to drop bzr-builddeb from Recommends and add
> > dh-make [1]. The recommended packages of packaging-dev should be
> > recommended by most of the Debian developer and not just by the
> > maintainer of packaging-dev or one single bug reporter.
>
> I think this is a failing proposition. There are as many different
> preferences about packaging, to the nearest order of magnitude, as there are
> Debian developers. I'm fine with this package being one maintainer's
> recommendations for some packages; I'm not at all ok with it being recast as
> a blessed recommendation of the project, as I object to about a third of the
> stuff in there.

The main purpose of this package is to help beginners to get ready for
packaging and not making a recommendation statement for the Debian
project. The question is: Will you recommend newcomers to install
packaging-dev to start packaging? Will installing packaging-dev be
enough or will you recommend to install bzr-builddeb or dh-make
afterwards?

> > Therefore I am asking you: How popular are bzr-builddeb and dh-make?
> > Should they be recommended or just suggested by packaging-dev?
>
> dh-make isn't so relevant now that debhelper 7 exists. cp
> /usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.tiny debian/rules && dch
> --create, manually create debian/control and debian/copyright, and that's
> about it.

That's my opinion, too.

> bzr is the fourth most popular version control system in Debian according to
> <http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/vcs-usage/>. If you're going to demote
> bzr-builddeb (which doesn't bother me), I think you should also be demoting
> svn-buildpackage, because svn is horrible and should die.

I agree that Subversion should die, but it is still widely used.

--
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:57:55PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > bzr is the fourth most popular version control system in Debian according to
> > <http://upsilon.cc/~zack/stuff/vcs-usage/>. If you're going to demote
> > bzr-builddeb (which doesn't bother me), I think you should also be demoting
> > svn-buildpackage, because svn is horrible and should die.

> Well, you should also mention the numbers from this site. svn and git
> are used about 20 and 40 times respectively more often than bzr for
> packaging. Saying that bzr is popular is would be misleading
> considering these numbers.

I didn't say it was popular, I said it was the fourth most popular.

Being agnostic to the VCS being used fails in the stated purpose of making
this package useful to new packagers. New packagers should be strongly
steered away from using subversion. I don't care if bzr-builddeb gets
demoted; I care that new packagers are not encouraged to use subversion over
bzr solely because subversion is more popular. The popularity of subversion
for packaging is a measure of inertia and/or ignorance, not of the
appropriateness of the tool.

bzr (especially with bzr-builddeb) is the best tool for the job, but I know
not everyone shares that opinion. git is a tolerable second. svn should be
taken out and shot.

> Recommending dh_make is actually very sensible as it's always a
> good start when packaging from scratch. I use it for all my packages
> and gives a rough guideline for the packaging work.

I find the .ex files that it generates in debian/ to be a major distraction
nowadays, and greatly prefer to build the package up by hand.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 5:35 AM, Benjamin Drung wrote:

> A poll is a good idea. Can you recommend a site that allows setting up a
> poll?

The Debian secretary was at one point going to setup devotee for this
sort of thing, don't think that ever happened though.

If you want some FSAAS (free-software-as-a-service), search for doodle
on this page:

https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/LeavingTheCloud

--
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> dh-make isn't so relevant now that debhelper 7 exists. cp
> /usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.tiny debian/rules && dch
> --create, manually create debian/control and debian/copyright, and that's
> about it.
dh-make comes from the era when deb-make (anyone remember that) was
around which, I think, was before debhelper was around. It was
basically written to fix a "problem" which was bad templates getting
into the Debian archive.

debhelper has gotten smarter with every release and gradually what
dh-make has had to do is getting reduced. I'm not sure we're at the
point of removing dh-make (it's an open question; I'm really not sure)
but perhaps we will be there one day. As it was written to solve a
problem, if the problem goes then we won't need it.

Steve with his years of packaging experience is not probably a good
sample of one to base this upon. I'd be curious to see if newer
packagers use it or not.

As far as what packaging-dev recommends or suggests, I've never used it
so don't really care either way. I am curious why a specific tool is
recommended over a generic one (I don't use bzr anywhere so it would be
useless for me).

- Craig
--
Craig Small VK2XLZ http://enc.com.au/ csmall at : enc.com.au
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/ csmall at : debian.org
GPG fingerprint: 5D2F B320 B825 D939 04D2 0519 3938 F96B DF50 FEA5


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Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Fri, 12 Oct 2012, Craig Small wrote:
> Steve with his years of packaging experience is not probably a good
> sample of one to base this upon. I'd be curious to see if newer
> packagers use it or not.

I still use dh-make from time to time. Mainly to get a template for
debian/control and debian/copyright. It tend to be annoyed by the *.ex and
*.EX files though (IMO it would be better to have a debian/TODO listing
all the stuff that one should consider adding to the package with
appropriate pointers to the documentation).

In any case, I think it's a good idea to list dh-make in packaging-dev's
Recommends.

I have no opinion on bzr-builddeb.

> As far as what packaging-dev recommends or suggests, I've never used it
> so don't really care either way. I am curious why a specific tool is
> recommended over a generic one (I don't use bzr anywhere so it would be
> useless for me).

The idea is that you get all the tools required to contribute to most of
the packaging teams in Debian.

It's not about endorsing a specific workflow.

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook:
→ http://debian-handbook.info/get/


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Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:03:53 +1100
Craig Small <csmall@debian.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > dh-make isn't so relevant now that debhelper 7 exists. cp
> > /usr/share/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.tiny debian/rules && dch
> > --create, manually create debian/control and debian/copyright, and that's
> > about it.
>
> Steve with his years of packaging experience is not probably a good
> sample of one to base this upon. I'd be curious to see if newer
> packagers use it or not.

People around me @ work who are/were unfamiliar with Debian packaging
find the .ex files particularly useful as worked examples - especially
for the maintainer scripts, init scripts and manpage starters.

dh-make as an executable may have had it's day but the worked example
files are valuable and will remain so as long as the examples continue
to keep up with Policy.

--


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

Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make
 

dh-make should be deprecated :-)


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