Core-Dev Application: Till Kamppeter

[Till Kamppeter]

Stefan Potyra wrote:
>> Problem of these packages was that they were not available as source code.
>>
>> There were binary tarballs and for some packages even only binary RPM
>> and DEB packages. Extracting the file system tree from the DEbian
>> packages required a lot of manual correction of permissions.
> 
> Why not use e.g. dh_fixperms and do it manually instead?
>

"dh_fixperms -a" is used, but this did not set all permissions 
correctly. Some files still needed manual correction. Here is the part 
of the debian/rules file which sets the permissions and ownerships:

dh_fixperms -a
chown -R root:lp debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother
chmod 0664 debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother/inf/brHL*
chmod 0664 debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother/inf/brMFC*
chmod 0664 debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother/inf/brFAX*
chmod 0664 debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother/inf/brDCP*
chmod 0775 debian/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/usr/Brother/inf

> What is wrong for Brother to install to /usr/local?
> 

General policy for packages coming with a distribution is to install 
into /usr. Brother would be perfectly correct installing into /opt 
(third-party package) for RPM and DEB packages and into /usr/local for a 
tarball (local admin installation).

> Why is the dependency on ia32-libs needed?
>

Brother's binaries are i386 binaries. These do not work on amd64 as the 
amd64 system des not have the 32-bit versions of the standard libraries 
(like libc and so on). These 32-bit libraries are delivered by the 
ia32-libs package.


>> It is really much more packaging-friendly if manufacturers publish
>> properly free drivers or at least follow my design guidelines (where I
>> have added several items after the work with the Brother packages):
>>
>> https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/WritingAndPackagingPrinter
>> Drivers
>>
>> Brother developers, please have a look at HPLIP. Thanks.
> 
> I guess you won't reach Brother devs on this list ;).
> 

I know. Unfortunately I do not have good contact to Brother. With other 
manufacturers I already reached a lot.

> 
> Ok, so by this logic, I assume you will again upload broken packages, if a 
> freeze is imminent?
> 

This was all with the intention to deliver fixed packages before 
release, The contributors were so enthusiastic on these packages that I 
was very confident on that they would fix the remaining bugs in a few 
days. And they did. And I also did not simply upload, I talked with 
Martin Pitt about that and he agreed also with the upload.

I do not upload packages where I am not confident that they will get 
fixed quickly.

I could have waited for the packages having reached perfect state and 
asked for an FF exception, but I was not very cofident to get an FF 
exception about completely new packages. And Brother users were waiting 
too long to get their drivers into the distro.

    Till