Outdated packaging in packaging/Debian

[Andrew Kroeger]

Timur I. Bakeyev wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 01:29:31PM +0200, Bj?rn Jacke wrote:
>> On 2009-06-12 at 01:33 +0200 Jelmer Vernooij sent off:
>>> Would anybody object to removing the contents of this directory and
>>> instead putting in a README file that points to the svn.debian.org and
>>> the SerNet Debian packages? 

Yes - see below.

>> I'd actually also like to propose remove the packaging files for Red Hat and
>> replace them with a README pointing to distributors' packages. 

No - see below...

> 
> I'd go farther and remove all the packaging staff and replace it with one
> README, pointing, where appropriate packages for different systems can be
> found. Like in FreeBSD ports collection :)
> 
> Cheers,
> Timur.

Please do not take this the wrong way, but Samba is far too dynamic to 
allow downstream sources to be the ultimate authority WRT packaging.  I 
*do* believe the downstream distributions possess their own right to 
apply patches against the official release tarballs WRT their needs as 
far as init scripts, configuration options, local (not accepted 
upstream) patches, FHS (or non-FHS) compliance, etc.

I currently run my development system on a Fedora 9 (x86_64) system that 
is maintained with all current updates.  A recent change to the 
LIBNETAPI torture tests required me to upgrade my RPM-based installation 
to the latest (custom RPM build) Samba release in order to provide the 
current libnetapi.so DSO.

If the goal is to prevent Samba team members from being responsible for 
the Samba packaging for a given named distribution, please provide links 
within the proposed README to the Samba wiki so that packaging 
contributions can be made by all.

Allowing downstream packagers to build their own distributions of Samba 
packages is the nature of the FOSS community.  However, not providing 
packaging resources to those who wish to "roll their own" packages from 
any given Samba snapshot seems to me to be telling those who are 
following Samba development that they're on their own - not that there's 
a community behind them.

Sincerely,
Andrew Kroeger

P.S. - I recently attempted to generate and build a Fedora 9 NTP RPM 
package based off of the current (Fedora rawhide) NTP source RPM, to 
provide the signed NTP responses required by MS ADS domain client 
machines.  I gave up on my efforts because the delta of the number of 
local (Fedora RPM) patches against the stable NTP branch vs. the most 
recent NTP development tarball was too large.