Hello everyone, After rather too long of a hiatus, Debian Policy 4.0.0.0 has been uploaded to Debian *experimental*. It's in experimental for two reasons: * Policy 4.0.0.0 is not targeted for Debian stretch. We're getting ready for the start of the buster development cycle. Please don't prioritize updating your packages until stretch is released. Please don't include Standards-Version changes in your uploads targeted for stretch. * This release finally converts Policy from DebianDoc-SGML to DocBook. Many thanks to Osamu Aoki and Guillem Jover for their hard work on this conversion. This is a significant change with downstream impact on all the rendered versions. There will be bugs and formatting problems, and there will be unexpected impact on downstream consumers of Policy. It will take a bit to sort those out. I expect there to be a few more point-release changes to packaging and formatting uploaded to experimental before uploading to unstable for the start of the buster development cycle. (I've indeed already noticed about six minor bugs, including the missing release date in the upgrading checklist....) Due to the DocBook conversion, and the resources rightly devoted to the stretch release instead, it may be a bit before the new Policy version shows up properly in all the places it's published. Here are the changes from the previous announced version of Policy (3.9.7): A.2. Version 4.0.0 May, 2017 4.3 config.sub and config.guess should be updated at build time or replaced with the versions from autotools-dev. 4.9 New TARGET set of dpkg-architecture variables and new DEB_*_ARCH_BITS and DEB_*_ARCH_ENDIAN variables. 4.9.1 New DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS tag, nodoc, which says to suppress documentation generation (but continue to build all binary packages, even documentation packages, just let them be mostly empty). 5.2 Automatically-generated debug packages do not need to have a corresponding paragraph in debian/control. (This is existing practice; this Policy update is just clearer about it.) 5.6.12 Colons are not permitted in upstream version numbers. 7.7 New Build-Depends-Arch and Build-Conflicts-Arch fields are now supported. 8.4 The recommended package name for shared library development files is now libraryname-dev or librarynameapiversion-dev, not librarynamesoversion-dev. 9.1.1 The stable release of Debian supports /run, so packages may now assume that it exists and do not need any special dependency on a version of initscripts. 9.3.2 New optional try-restart standard init script argument, which (if supported) should restart the service if it is already running and otherwise just report success. 9.3.2 Support for the status init script argument is recommended. 9.3.3.2 Packages must not call /etc/init.d scripts directly even as a fallback, and instead must always use invoke-rc.d (which is essential and shouldn't require any conditional). 9.11.1 Instructions for upstart integration removed since upstart is no longer maintained in Debian. 10.1 Packages may not install files in both path and /usr/path and manage any backward-compatibility symlinks so that they don't break if path and /usr/path are the same directory. 10.6 Packages should assume device files in /dev are dynamically managed and don't have to be created by the package. Packages other than those whose purpose is to manage /dev must not create or remove files there when a dynamic management facility is in use. Named pipes and device files outside of /dev should normally be created on demand via init scripts, systemd units, or similar mechanisms, but may be created and removed in maintainer scripts if the must be created during package installation. 10.9 Checking with the base-passwd maintainer is no longer required (or desirable) when creating a new dynamic user or group in a package. 12.3 Dependencies on *-doc packages should be at most Recommends (Suggests if they only include documentation in supplemental formats). 12.5 The Mozilla Public License 1.1 and 2.0 (MPL-1.1 and MPL-2.0) are now included in /usr/share/common-licenses and do not need to be copied verbatim in the package copyright file. copyright-format The https form of the copyright-format URL is now allowed and preferred in the Format field. perl The Perl search path now includes multiarch directories. The vendor directory for architecture-specific modules is now versioned to support multiarch. virtual New adventure virtual package for implementations of the classic Colossal Cave Adventure game. virtual New httpd-wsgi3 virtual package for Python 3 WSGI-capable HTTP servers. The existing httpd-wsgi virtual package is for Python 2 WSGI-capable HTTP servers. virtual New virtual-mysql-client, virtual-mysql-client-core, virtual-mysql-server, virtual-mysql-server-core, and virtual-mysql-testsuite virtual packages for MySQL-compatible software. A.3. Version 3.9.8 Released April, 2016. 9.6 The menu system is deprecated in favor of the FreeDesktop menu standard. New requirements set for FreeDesktop menu entries. 9.7 New instructions for registering media type handlers with the FreeDesktop system, which automatically synchronizes with mailcap and therefore replaces mailcap registration for packages using desktop entries. -- Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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