Re: several things
Bill Mitchell writes ("Re: several things"):
> [...]
> Good question. The Guidelines document says that
> /usr/doc/copyright/<package> should not normally be compressed.
> Why not? Under what abnormal conditions should it be compressed?
Because most of these files are very small, and compressing them is
not worthwhile.
The abnormal conditions are large files.
> > Another two: perhaps packages shouldn't install if no copyright was
> > included, unless you force them to do anyway. The maintainer should
> > take care of this but perhaps this is a protection of a proper
> > "debian" system?
>
> Another good one. IMHO, there should be more checking done both
> before including a package into the distribution and before installing
> it on the user's system to be sure the package is at least minimally
> acceptable. A package without a copyright file isn't acceptable, by
> our guidelines, and shouldn't be placed into the distribution.
It is not the job of dpkg to decide whether a package is acceptable or
not in terms of conforming to policies like /usr/doc/copyright. It is
the job of the people who maintain the distribution that produced the
package.
dpkg (and dselect)'s job is to check that the package is a consistent
representation of a sane package (from an appropriate source, if this
check is desired), and then to install it as desired by the user.
For example, an organisation might want to make internal packages
which need not contain /usr/doc/copyright.
Ian.
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