Re: [RFC Kernel PATCH 1/1] builddeb: support creation of linux-perf packages

[Baurzhan Ismagulov <ibr@radix50.net>]

Hello Cedric,

On Tue, Sep 03, 2019 at 10:01:43AM +0200, Cedric Hombourger wrote:
> Unfortunately Ubuntu does not use the same package structure
...
> Anything comes to mind?
> 
> Should we give up the idea of using builddeb and instead use our own
> debian/{control,rules} in Isar? (Jan told me that you have started to
> discuss/consider this)

Thanks for summarizing the differences. I'm afraid there is no silver bullet,
it will diverge. As I see it, the approach matrix is still the same:

          generic  specific

own       complex  simple
                   repetitive

upstream  complex  complex
          fragile  fragile

For a single downstream project, I'd choose own-specific at the cost of some
repetition. I assume it to require less effort than upstream-generic. In my
understanding, this is what Ubuntu does due to practical reasons. Unifying the
three upstreams is a noble task, but I don't see anyone feeling inclined to
solve that for the long-term.

For Isar or a generic base layer on top of it, the effort mix will be
different. Upstream-specific doesn't make sense, and upstream-generic is
difficult due to the reasons in your mail. The alternative is copying
own-specific. Given enough permutations, this will become unmanageable at some
point (updating will be costly and error-prone). Start with own-generic via
e.g. sed <config.in >config -- and you end up with your own version of deb-pkg.
So, here the question is how many variants one is going to ultimately have.

For the generic case, I don't see approaches better than deb-pkg ATM. IMHO, it
doesn't have to be ugly. They already support e.g. rpm; do they have variants
for Fedora, SUSE, etc.?

With kind regards,
Baurzhan.