Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 13:24:08 +1000
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Important Note On Source-Only Uploads
From: Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>


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Hello world,

Basically: don't do them.

In more detail: it's possible, even easy with the recent versions of dpkg,
to do source-only uploads to the archive. That is only upload a diff and a
dsc (and maybe an orig.tgz), without any .debs at all.

The most important problem this has is how katie (the new dinstall)
processes it. It goes through the following motions:
	* check source's md5sums etc
	* install source into archive
	* add source to sid
	* notice source has no binaries in any suite
	* remove source

The only good thing about the way katie handles this is that it doesn't
delete the old source. It does remove any reference to that source from
the sid Sources.gz file though.

Another significant problem with source-only uploads is that (afaik,
anyway) none of the autobuilders will attempt to build any arch: all
packages, which would have left both the source only uploads I've noticed
recently to break anyway.

There may be other problems, but those are probably showstoppers enough.

Ob!Nike: Just don't do it.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

     ``Thanks to all avid pokers out there''
                       -- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001

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