[Distutils] Re: bdist_deb patches

[Jeff Dairiki]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:03:16 +0100, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

> As always, I think explicit is better than implicit.
> 
> The bdist_rpm command uses an option with which you can
> specify the doc-files (--doc-files). I'd use the same approach for
> bdist_deb.
> 
> That way a packager has full control over what is considered
> a documentation file and what not. I usually place that information
> into the setup.cfg file, so that the user doesn't have to bother
> about the setting.

My code current does implement a --doc-files option, a la bdist_rpm.
There are also several other options which control what goes into
/usr/share/doc:
--upstream-changelog, --license-file, and --examples.
The heuristics are only used if the option is not explicitly set (e.g. if 
the --doc-files=NEWS option is specified, README will not automatically
be included.)

My thinking is that it's better to shotgun a few things, like a README
and hopefully some licensing information, into the package rather than
just leave them out.

The reason for the four separate options rather than just --doc-files is that
Debian policy want to see those four different classes of files installed in
quite specific manners.

Given that the heuristics are only used to compute default values, do you still
think they are a bad thing?

Jeff