Debian packages with /outdated/ packaging style

(This is just a copy of this debian-devel@ email)

Following my blog post yesterday with graphs about Debian packaging evolution, I prepared lists of packages for each kind of outdatedness. Of course not all practices highlighted below are deprecated, and there are good reasons to continue to do some of them. But still, given that they all represent a clear minority of packages, I thought that it would be useful to list the related packages. (I honestly didn’t know if some of my packages would show up in the lists!)

The lists are available at https://people.debian.org/~lucas/qa-20151226/

I also pushed them to alioth, so you can either do:
ssh people.debian.org 'grep -A 10 YOURNAME ~lucas/public_html/qa-20151226/*ddlist'
or:
ssh alioth.debian.org 'grep -A 10 YOURNAME ~lucas/qa-20151226/*ddlist'

the meaning of the lists is:

  • qa-comaint_but_no_vcs.txt (275 packages): Based on the content of Maintainer/Uploaders, the package is co-maintained, but there are no Vcs-* fields.
  • qa-format_10.txt (3153 packages): The package is still using format 1.0.
  • qa-helper_classic_debhelper.txt (3647 packages): The package is still using “classic” debhelper (no dh, no CDBS).
  • qa-helper_not_debhelper.txt (144 packages): The package is not using debhelper (nor dh, nor CDBS).
  • qa-patch_dpatch.txt (170 packages): The package is using dpatch.
  • qa-patch_modified-files-outside-debian.txt (1156 packages): The package has modified files outside the debian/ directory (not tracked using patches).
  • qa-patch_more_than_one.txt (201 packages): The package uses more than one “patch system”. In most cases, it means that the package uses a patch system, but also has files modified directly outside of debian/.
  • qa-patch_other.txt (51 packages): The package has patches, but using an unidentified/unknown patch system.
  • qa-patch_quilt.txt (445 packages): The package uses quilt (with 1.0 format, not 3.0 format).
  • qa-patch_simple-patchsys.txt (129 packages): The package uses simple-patchsys.
  • qa-vcs_but_not_git_or_svn.txt (290 packages): The package is maintained using a VCS, which is not either Git or SVN.
  • qa-vcs_more_than_one_declared_vcs.txt (1 package): The package declares more than one VCS.

If you don’t understand why your package is listed, you can have a look at allpackages-20151226.yaml that provides more details. If you still don’t understand, just ask me.

Excluding duplicates, a total of 5469 packages are listed. The dd-list output for the merged list is also available (which isn’t very useful, except to know if you are listed).

Debian is still changing

Here is an update to the usual graphs generated from snapshot.d.o. See my previous blog post for the background info.

In all graphs, it’s easy to see the effect of the Jessie freeze (and the previous freezes since 2005, too).

Team maintenance

comaint-2015

 

It’s interesting to see that, while the number of team-maintained packages increases, the number of packages that aren’t co-maintained is very stable.

Maintenance using a VCS

vcs-2015

Git is the clear winner now, with the migration rate increasing recently.

Packaging helpers

helpers-2015

As usual, the number of packages using CDBS is quite stable. The number of packages using traditional debhelper might soon be lower than those using CDBS.

Patch systems and packaging formats

formats-patches-2015

 

3.0 is the clear winner, even if we still have 3000+ packages using 1.0, and ~1000 of those modifying files directly. The other patch systems have basically disappeared.

So, all those graphs are kind-of boring now. Any good ideas of additional things to track, that be can identified reliably by looking at source packages?

For those interested, below are links to the graphs with percentages of packages.

comaint-percent-2015    formats-patches-percent-2015    vcs-percent-2015    helpers-percent-2015