[Indic-computing-devel] debian toolchain question.

[Cherry G. M. <ber...@ya...>]

Hello List,

I have a couple of questions about 


I) _____The debian toolchain port______

This is how I've currently done it:

1) Create a .deb file with all the requisite
dependencies.

2) Provide a Debian apt-get compatible directory
layout a.k.a a "Debian Archive".[1]

3) Provide further .debs (like for the peps package )
within this directory.

4) Point apt-get to the directory layout

5) Provide instructions to the user on how to
configure the apt-get tree.

Debian is a heavily centralized packageing system, and
depends on preset configurations, like for example the
preformatted directory layout. 

While Koshy suggested that I provide a make file build
tree to build .deb files themselves, I feel that
debian package management is a chore to be undertaken
by a package maintainer. Opening this to the user is
redundant and error prone ( because the dpkg debian
package management system is a formidable system to
master - and it requires a set of packages for package
maintainance. ).

My suggestion is that we should move this virtual
package ( indic-doc-toolchain.deb ) to the debian
repository at debian.org, along with the additional
package ( peps.deb ), so that the average user just
needs to do:
 
apt-get install indic-doc-toolchain

to get the toolchain dependencies installed.

II) _______The_src_makefiles_______

The Makefiles within doc/share/mk assume a FreeBSD
directory layout. This is quite different from the
debian Filesystem Heirarchy Standard [2]

There are two solutions:

1) Provide an alternate cvs branch forked off the
current main branch, and periodically merge from the
main branch.
2) Provide OS specific hooks within the current branch
and make the current build system portable.

I personally prefer 1), because the FreeBSD project
and the Debian project are two entirely different
projects with their own goals, and since the build
system is based on the FreeBSD doc-toolchain, and
since it assumes things about the filesystem layout,
trying to make it portable would bloat the Makefile
code a lot (writing wrapper variables, #ifdefs etc. )

On the other hand, if we have a maintainer <->
upstream relationship with the indic-port, where the
FreeBSD branch, being the branch where all the action
happens is treated as the upstream code, and the
individual OS port is treated as maintainer ports,
each OS port will have responsible owners and be
tweaked and debugged to its best.

Please comment.

Best,

Cherry.

PostScript: I won't be doing indic-related work until
the beginning of next month. It would be nice if we
could reach a consensus by then.

[1] 
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html

[2]
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/fhs/

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