debhelper v2
Here are the changes I'm planning to make to debhelper for v2, based on
prior discussion here. I'm still very open to comments on all this.
* Standardize on the name used for the temporary build directory of a
package. Currently it's debian/tmp/ for the first package and
debian/<package>/ for other packages of a multi-binary package. I've
decided after much agonizing to to use debian/<package>. The main thing is
has going for it is it means lots of multi-binary packages need only small
alterations, since they alreadt use debian/<package> for making most of
thier .deb's anyway. I eliminated the other ideas for these reasons:
- debian/tmp/<package>: debian/tmp already has history behind it,
changing how it's used would be confusing.
- debian/build/<package>: confusing (is the code compiled there?)
- debian/tmp-<package>, debian/package-<tmp>: too long, little gain
* dh_installmanpages will be made into a non-DWIM program, so you'll have to
specify all man pages to install and possibly where to put them. This may
look something like:
dh_installmanpages -x xterm.1 xfoo.1 xbar.man
dh_installmanpages --section=8 su.man
Ok, there's a _little_ DWIM left in there, it'll be smart enough to munge
the .man filenames properly. It'll probably just assume all man pages have
an extention, and delete that extentation, and add the correct one.
* dh_movefiles will use a name other than debian/<package>.files for the
list of what to move, because it can't use debian/files for the first
package, since that file is already used elsewhere. It'll use
debian/<package>.move
* dh_movefiles should delete empty directories after it's moved all files
out of them. (#17111)
* debian/README will be installed as /usr/doc/<package>/README in native
packages, and as README.Debian in non-native packages. This is consistent
with the handing of debian/TODO and debian/changelog. (#34628)
* There will be no change to the names of debhelper config files used, I've
decided against debian/<package>/* and the like, because although those
subdirs do work, they're not allowed by the packaging manual, and they'd
make source unpacking by hand a lot harder. I will leave these files
completly as they are now. However, I will remove most of the language
documenting that debian/<foo> works, and will deprecate that usage.
debian/<package>.<foo> will be preferred even in single binary packages.
I'm still undecided about this:
* debhelper v2 could automatically register conffiles for any files it's
responsible for installing that it knows are conffiles. For example,
dh_installinit installs some init scripts that are going to be conffiles,
so there's no reason to make the developer go in after the fact and add
them to the conffiles list.
The problem with it is that just because dh_installinit installs an init
script for you, doesn't mean you want it to be registered as a conffile. You
might instead have some script that modifies it.
--
see shy jo
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