Re: Progress of Maemo Port

Robert Staudinger wrote:
> Hi Ryan,
>
> On Jan 10, 2008 12:29 AM, Ryan Pavlik <abiryan@ryand.net> wrote:
>> This is mostly a inquiry toward Renato, but it certainly can be
>> generalized. As you might know, AbiWord recently received a nice Maemo
>> 4.0 patch, so that in theory we can run on the latest N810/N800 software
>> (IT OS2008). In the bug report, it also said that we have our 2007
>> compatability too.
>>
>> My questions:
>> 1. Building/Packaging - There is maemo debian packaging in the source
>> tree, but it's pretty outdated. I've tried to build using it (see
>> http://cleardefinition.com/page/Build_AbiWord_for_Maemo/ ) - the key is
>> the ln -s step. This could use some TLC, preferably before 2.6.0 so
>> that the internettablettalk.com community doesn't have my head for not
>> shipping a Maemo binary :) IMHO, it is preferable to keep this
>> specialized packaging in the AbiWord tree, so that it can be maintained
>> along with the rest - it's an entirely different platform/port and not
>> just another distro.
>
> I have my reservations regarding this approach as it's prone to
> bitrot. Just issue `ls src/pkg/' in the abiword toplevel dir if you
> need evidence.
> What about building a packaging kit for maemo as a separate project?
> Just like Marc is maintaining the RPM stuff outside the source tree
> (if I'm not mistaken).

I would be inclined to agree with Rob, I think as a general rule,
packaging files for any distro should be kept separate from the project
itself, and the project itself should be packaging-agnostic.

In case of the maemo packaging it makes little practical difference
whether it is maintained in the tree or outside of it, as in order to
build the packages, the packaging files need to live a directory called
'debian' at the top of the tree (which is one place where it really
cannot be for sake of all the debian-based distros out there) so no
matter where we keep it you have to modify the Abi tree to build the
maemo packages, which is what being a package maintainer is all about.

Tomas
Received on Thu Jan 10 09:45:19 2008