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Re: Documentation on package maintenance

On 09/27/2013 09:45 AM, Joachim Zobel wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Is there any documentation on maintaining existing packages. The docs I
> find focus on how to create a package. I myself currently try to find
> out how the netbeans package from git works. I will find out, but it
> could be a lot easier with a few one liners and a short explanation of
> their context.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Joachim

Hi Joachim,

Although it may not seem like it, most of the simpler team-maintained
packages follow a consistent process for building.  (We could do a
better job of documenting that process on the wiki, though.)  Larger,
more complex packages can be a different story.

Oftentimes the build process is documented in README.source, as
recommended by policy [1].  However, in practice, these files are often
out of date.  In the case of packages that don't build in the standard
way (everything should build with "debuild -us -uc"), I'd suggest
contacting the maintainers and/or filing a severity wishlist bug report
against the source package requesting the addition of the file.

Cheers,
tony

[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#s-readmesource
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