Bug#1020241: debian-policy: copyright-format: Formatting improvements/changes
Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> writes:
> These are the set of changes I keep doing to the debian/copyright files
> I end up touching. While some could be characterized as a subjective
> style issue, I've tried to give as close as possibly objective :)
> rationale for every and each of the changes in the commit messages which
> I'll summarize here.
Thanks! I have applied these changes for the next release except for
patch 0002 (applying wrap-and-sort -sat).
I agree with patch 0002 for Files, but unfortunately I believe it's
incorrect for Copyright. You're treating Copyright as if it were a
line-based list field, but for better or worse (I think probably for
worse) the current specification says that it's a formatted field. This
means that your change to, for example:
Copyright:
2008 John Doe <jdoe@example.com>
2007 Jane Smith <jsmith@example.org>
2007 Joe Average <joe@example.org>
2007 J. Random User <jr@users.example.com>
means that the semantic content of that field is now:
2008 John Doe <jdoe@example.com> 2007 Jane Smith <jsmith@example.org>
2007 Joe Average <joe@example.org> 2007 J. Random User
<jr@users.example.com>
and a format-aware display engine should show it as such. This is the
reason why lines are indented: that makes them verbatim lines per the
formatting specification in
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields#s-f-description
I would agree with changing the definition of Copyright to a line-based
list, although in order to do so we'd have to figure out the implications
of a format change in the specification, and we should also flesh out the
definition of a line-based list to explain how to handle a line that's
longer than the normal wrap length.
(In retrospect, I really regret not supporting YAML as the syntax for this
file. I know YAML has a lot of problems, but it provides an unambiguous
representation of constructions like this, whereas deb822 has a lot of
gaps.)
I would happily apply a version of 0002 that only changes Files and leaves
Copyright alone.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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