The files generated by game-data-packager are not trivially distinguishable
from non-free games obtained from Debian (doom-wad-shareware) or from
some other source (e.g. gog.com), and show up in e.g. aptitude under

"Obsolete and Locally Created" -> games -> non-free

However, most of them are in fact "worse than non-free": they cannot be
redistributed at all without copyright infringement.

I'm tempted to say that we should put them in some new pseudo-component
and/or pseudo-section, like maybe non-distributable/game-data-packager.
Thoughts?

    S

Unless you have your own repo, then they are completely mixed with the rest.

I would go for 'local/games'; as there may be other ways of building local
packages (equivs ?) and this is short.

"local" = this file can only be installed localy on a single computer.

aptitude already gives a tip when you browse down 'non-free' sections;
it could also give a tip about 'local' packages;

https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/index.en.html
"Additionally, some software is not distributable (for example, has no license at all), even in non-free."


I see that most commercial games erroneously ships .debs
with section = "(free/)games". (WorldOfGoo, TicketToRide,...)

If there was some officialy recommend way to ship local package;
this would happen less.

What do you think to propose a change in the policy ?
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html

I found this, but haven't read it yet:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=704233


Alexandre

" apt purge '~o' " is recommended practice after
an upgrade to the next release.

Unfortunately it will also remove all GDP-packaged games.

A "local/" section guaranteed to never exist for official  package
would do the trick.
and then APT would need to be teached about it;
and it would not be games specific at all.

The same bug affects play.it too.

Greetings

Am 2025-05-24 22:09, schrieb Alexandre Detiste:

This sounds like a very good idea for the next release cycle.

  - Fabian

game-data-packager already generates .deb files with
"Section: local/games"[1], so this isn't really an actionable request
for g-d-p any more: it's apt that would need to be taught about this
pseudo-Section (or perhaps more like a pseudo-archive-area).

play.it could also benefit from this.

Outside the games team, libdvdcss (generated by libdvd-pkg) could
usefully be in local/libs and local/libdevel.

     smcv

[1] except for a few shareware, demo, addon or otherwise redistributable
     packages, which are currently emitted as non-free/games, although
     that does mean they would be eligible for removal as "obsolete"

Le Tue, May 27, 2025 at 12:11:42PM +0100, Simon McVittie a écrit :

I would be willing to adopt this same convention with ./play.it. I can
change that in the next upstream feature release, that I plan to prepare
sometime soon after Trixie release.