Re: [gentoo-user] FYI: Rules for distro-friendly packages

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday 25 June 2010 23:57:54 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Freitag 25 Juni 2010, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> >
> > I'm currently collecting a set of rules which upstream developers
> > should follow to make distro maintainer's life easier.
> >
> > Comments welcomed :)
> >
> >
> > cu
>
> no bundled libs.
>
> when you change the tarball fucking change the version number.

I forgot that one. Sun are INFAMOUS for that with the jdk..

> and what Alan said.

Some more:

Don't depend on some arb version number of libs. Nothing worse than being 
forced to use some lib 4 versions behind current when current actually works 
just fine

Test your code under realistic conditions. Unit tests exist for a reason, read 
'em

Read flameeyes's blog. You might not agree with everything he says, but 
consider it all carefully as a technical position. He makes good points.

Don't try and re-invent the wheel with sucky roll-your-own build systems. 
auto* sucks, but by and large they suck less than anything you can come up 
with considering your more limited resources.

No hardcoded locations. If I want to install to /opt/csw/package/, then I 
should be able to do it, it makes zero difference to upstream if I do

The entire package under the same license if possible. This doesn't always 
work out - a GPL package may include someone else's BSD code who is not 
willing to re-license it. So be it. But please do make an effort to get 
everything under the same license, it makes decisions so much easier for your 
users to make.

Maintain the README, NEWS, INSTALL, ChangeLog, etc. We users actually do read 
them, and up to date metadata gives us a warm fuzzy where we feel good about 
your code

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com