Re: Forwarded: RFC: New source packaging format

[Bdale Garbee <bdale@gag.com>]

In article <87u3e7arih.fsf@fleming.jimpick.com> you wrote:

I'm remarkably unopinionated about how we package sources, except that I'm
pretty happy with dpkg-source and so it seems reasonable to me to tweak the 
things that need tweaking in dpkg-source, rather than do something radically 
different.

However, you hit one of my "hot buttons":

:  2) Linux kernels & patches

:     We already distribute the kernel sources in a Debian package (just
:     as I proposed doing for all sources).

Yep, we do.  And it's one of the few quasi-technical details about Debian that
I *really* dislike.  I never use these kernel sources, and I school everyone
I help to install Debian on how to acquire pristine kernel sources and build
their own kernel binary packages with the excellant kernel-package toolset.

I think it is *much* easier to track kernel developments and/or install kernel 
patches from the real world this way...

Obviously, others think the kernel source .deb files are useful, so I don't
actively oppose their inclusion... but I sure wouldn't use this as an example
of something we do that's so wonderful that we should emulate it elsewhere...

Actually, we'd probably do a bunch of our users a favor if we used the process
of unpacking kernel sources and regenerating a kernel as a trigger event to
explain/demonstrate to them how to use dpkg-source to unpack a source tree.
It's amazingly simple, and would give them a leg-up on recompiling things
if/when they felt some need to do so for other reasons. 

Bdale