Inclusion of debian packaging info (was Re: [Flac-dev] libFLAC docs)

[smoerk at gmx.de]

>This question comes up regularly on the Debian mailing lists, and there are
>arguments for both approaches.  I am against the practice of including a
>debian/ directory in upstream source distributions for the following
>reasons:

>- For the same reason, the Debian maintainer would have to have write access to
>  the upstream CVS repository.  This is often otherwise unnecessary or
>  undesirable.

why? isn't it possible to only give write access to the debian/
directory?

>- Debian source packages essentially consist of a copy of the upstream source
>  tarball (intact, when possible, so that signature verification and the like
>  can be performed) and a compressed diff which includes any debian-specific
>  changes.  This makes it easy for the user to recognize what changes were made
>  to the source code for the Debian package, and allows the user to selectively
>  add or omit such changes.

it's hard enough for the average user to find out how to compile source
packages and checkout from CVS. The Ogg sources also includes a debian/
dir and it was much easier to build deb packages from this.