Packaging: Project can't be compiled from svn with ubuntu-tools but from tarballs it can

[Gert Michael Kulyk]

Hi,

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, so please give me a hint
where to do so if it is not.

I've recently taken over the packaging for the gnome-globalmenu team, at
least until the former packager will have some more spare time again.

The problem is the following:

When building from svn, the package requires vala in either version
0.5.6 or 0.6.x to create a dist-tarball and/or binaries (none of the
mentioned packages is officially available in one of the released ubuntu
versions, jaunty includes broken 0.5.7 and vala team has already started
packaging 0.7.0 which will fail, too). 

But once created a dist-tarball, the package will compile without vala
at all. The configure script is still checking for vala, but it could be
patched to stop doing so (this would cause that there won't be any
dependency on valac at build-time, which should be a good thing for the
build-machines, too).

Because gnome-globalmenu-packaging should be in a state that would
possibly allow to include it in a release jaunty+1, my question is how
to deal with it. 

Would it be conform to the policies when building source from svn will
not be possible with ubuntu provided tools? Would it be against the
packaging-policies to patch the configure script to get rid of
valac-dependency?

If so, would a comment in debian/Readme.source be enough to clarify the
problem to users who want to build svn source?

Thanks in advance for Your help,

regards,

Gert