Item2106: Prepare Debian package for upload to Debian

This is a general issue to capture changes necessary for upload to Debian. Some will be prior to upload approval, making the packages as policy compliant as possible, and others after initial submission, to deal with anything brought up by the archive team.

Current lintian issues

W: foswiki: package-contains-upstream-install-documentation usr/share/doc/foswiki/INSTALL.html
W: foswiki: script-not-executable ./var/lib/foswiki/tools/mod_perl_startup.pl
W: foswiki: executable-not-elf-or-script ./var/lib/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins/TinyMCEPlugin.pm
W: foswiki: executable-not-elf-or-script ./var/lib/foswiki/tools/extender.pl
E: foswiki: debian-revision-should-not-be-zero 1.0.7-auto5004-0

The last was done intentionally, so there would be a flag on the package from the autobuilders, and some person would step in and do a real build before upload)

Current policy issues

1. Runtime modification of /etc/ files without saving user changes and interfering with updates.
2. The whole package, including binaries, in /var, rather than symlinks to FHS-compliant locations in /usr
   • Do not use symlinks see below.
3. Moving the /usr/lib/cgi-bin/foswiki/ directory out of /usr/lib/cgi-bin as mentioned in

Build issues

1. None of the module packages' source packages are being built, so can't be uploaded.
2. revision numbers may need tweaking to sort in the same order as Debian revision numbers. Debian revision sort is almost human readable, but 1 sorts before 1alpha2.

General cleanups

1. Moving the /usr/lib/cgi-bin/foswiki/ directory out of /usr/lib/cgi-bin as mentioned in
2. Use native Perl modules where possible, shrinking the size of the foswiki package (currently huge).
3. Separate the foswiki package into separate components, CGI's, configuration, libraries, documents to make debugging and upgrade easier. Some people might want just the binaries and libraries to run against existing content.

Testing

1. Add an install and remove step to the autobuilder, so at least that is known to work
2. Make sure tarball extensions can still install on the Debianized foswiki packages, as no contrib extensions will be available initially. Document this in README.Debian.

-- DrakeDiedrich - 19 Sep 2009

I'm making some changes to the above.. (and the commit you did..). putting the cgi's into /usr/share/foswiki is just as bad for the native foswiki 'way things are done' as /usr/lib/cgi-bin - I'm moving it to /var/lib/foswiki.

additionally, you don't seem to have provided any migration for existing users of the package - thus breaking their installs hard - I'm working on adding some atm.

Also, this task appears to contain a heck of a lot of stuff - not particularly easy for anyone else to get a grip on what changes are what, and how they caused (whatever issue they find that we didn't plan for)

re: W: foswiki: script-not-executable ./var/lib/foswiki/tools/mod_perl_startup.pl this is a bug mentioned in another task - and I've commited a fix to that task. Its important to allow other users to find the issues they find and their resolution.

please do not use symlinks they broke too many odd installations of the old twiki package and were a longer term maintenance disaster.

basically, over the years of working on tmwiki, putting everything into /var/lib/foswiki has become the best compromise between _users needs, and debian's (and the FHS's) poorly defined policies wrt dynamic webtools, forcing them to be split over many totally unrelated places, despite user's desire to know where they are.

-- SvenDowideit - 04 Oct 2009

Other issues have been opened, and several resolved, under DebianPackage.

-- DrakeDiedrich - 23 Oct 2009