[MPlayer-DOCS] [RFC] Binary packaging guidelines

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Wednesday, 17 November 2004 at 20:02, The Wanderer wrote:
> Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> 
> >About this document
> >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >With the release of MPlayer 0.90pre9 all licensing issues have been
> >eliminated and all code is licensed under the GPL. This allows
> >creating and distributing binary packages.
> 
> "creation and distribution" (possibly preceded by "the" and followed by
> "of").

Sorry, but I've never seen such constructs. All my grammar books, on the
other hand, are saying that either "allow + to + inf." or "allow + gerund"
is possible.

> >Although this was discouraged by some of the developers, the users'
> >need for ready-to-use binary packages was substantial and many
> >packagers created them. Unfortunately, many of now available packages
> >are crippled, including their own obsolete config files
> 
> "include"; either that or this needs rephrasing to indicate that "one of
> the ways in which the packages are crippled is that"....

Yes, I've noticed that after the mail was sent. Fixed.

> >or are mispackaged in some other way. This document aims to establish
> >a common set of packaging guidelines so that official binary packages
> >for other Linux distributions and other operating systems can be
> >maintained.
> 
> "other Linux distributions" - other than what? If you mean "other than
> my own RPM distribution", then that should I think be explicitly
> specified. If not, I'd suggest using "various" instead of "other".

Agreed, fixed.

> >Conventions
> >~~~~~~~~~~~
> >Whenever you see "MUST", it means that following the mentioned
> >guideline is required. Whenever you see "SHOULD", it means that
> >following the guideline is highly recommended, but is not required,
> >if necessary.
> 
> The "if necessary" seems a little odd to me. I'd either drop it or move
> it to before "is not required".

Heh, I guess I originally wanted to write "but can be disregarded/omitted"
and forgot to change the ending when I changed my mind. Removed.

> >Including other features, like LIVE.COM streaming or JACK support is
> >acceptable, but they SHOULD be build-time configurable, with default
> >build configuration containing the above set.
> 
> Missing comma after "support". That makes the sentence as a whole overly
> comma-heavy; I'd suggest splitting it with a semicolon after
> "acceptable", and using "They SHOULD, however, be build-time
> configurable" or some similar construction.

Agreed, done.

> >Compilation
> >~~~~~~~~~~~
> >While it is acceptable to provide packages optimized for specific
> >CPUs You MUST provide at least one "lowest common denominator"
> >package set that will work on all CPUs.
> 
> "specific CPUs, you MUST" - capitalization and comma issue. (This looks
> like a remnant of a time when the above was split into two sentences.)

Yes, fixed.

> >Make sure your source package can be rebuilt without hand-editing on
> >any system with the same distribution installed. Remember to disable
> >(--disable-xxx) any optional features, because MPlayer's configure
> >script autodetects most of them. This ensures that binary package
> >builds are deterministic. That is, provided they have at least the
> >required development packages installed, two different people using
> >the same distribution will get binaries with the same dependencies.
> 
> I don't like beginning a sentence with "That is,"; I'd suggest joining
> it to the previous sentence with a double-hypen, i.e., "are
> deterministic -- that is, provided they", et cetera.

Agreed, fixed.

Thanks,
R.

-- 
MPlayer RPMs maintainer: http://greysector.rangers.eu.org/mplayer/
"I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star. We are Grey.
 We stand between the darkness ... and the light."
        -- Delenn in Grey Council in Babylon 5:"Babylon Squared"