= Unifying the process to strip files with problematic copyright from upstream tarballs =

Also see https://wiki.debian.org/Javascript/Repacking !

The following features of `uscan` since devscripts version 2.14.2 are helpful to deal with upstream tarballs you need to tweak.

<<TableOfContents>>

== Deleting Files using Files-Excluded field in debian/copyright ==

By using the field {{{Files-Excluded}}}:
{{{
Files-Excluded: foo/bar.js
}}}

in the header stanza of `debian/copyright`, you can exclude files from an upstream tarball (see `man uscan`).

This field accepts a whitespace-separated list of patterns like [[https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/#files-field|Files]]. Example:
{{{
Files-Excluded: */Makefile.in aclocal.m4 config.h.in configure
}}}
Currently, this feature is not yet documented in `debian/copyright` file format [[https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/|specification]], but there is an open bug about this (DebianBug:685506).

The `mk-origtargz` tool (also from devscripts) can repack the original tarball even if no `debian/watch` file is present.

In order to retain the repacking suffix on the tarball the ''repacksuffix'' opts must be used in `debian/watch`.


Note that [[https://lintian.debian.org|Lintian]] will warn for files specified in the {{{Files-Excluded}}} field that exist in the source tree in the [[https://lintian.debian.org/tags/source-includes-file-in-files-excluded.html|source-includes-file-in-files-excluded]] tag.

== Specifying better compression method ==

You can specify a more reasonable compression method using `uscan --repack --compression <compression>`.  You can use `xz`, `bz2`, `gz`, or `lzma` here.  (see `man uscan`)


== Not yet implemented but potentially helpful ==

When repacking, `tar --exclude-vcs` is used.  Usually there is no point in having VCS metainformation in upstream tarballs.  It should be debated in a separate thread whether this option should be used unconditionally, but the current implementation is that way.  So, in the example above, the specification of `.git` is redundant because it will be left out anyway.  The feature to exclude VCS information from upstream tarballs will be subject of a future bug report.