Bug#681289: debian-policy: Changelog and copyright should be package metadata

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org>]

Hi,

Raphaël Hertzog writes:
> We should thus modify the policy to say:
> [...]
> 3/ that programs that want to retrieve the changelog and/or copyright
>    file of a .deb file should use dpkg-deb -I <file>
>    <changelog|copyrigh>" (or look for the changelog/copyright file in
>    the directory extracted with dpkg-deb -e <file>)

Please don't require the use of a command-line utility to inspect binary
packages. The location can be specified and you can recommend using
dpkg-deb, but libraries such as python-apt could (should?) implement
this themselves and not need to fork an external program.

Currently one can exclude changelog and copyright files from being
installed entirely. Will this feature remain available?

Ansgar