Re: Developer names within debian/changelog

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Thijs Kinkhorst <thijs@debian.org> writes:

> Maybe you can specify what problem you are trying to solve.

That's a fair question.

Thibaut Paumard <paumard@users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> Le 13 mai 08 à 13:24, Ben Finney a écrit :
> > I'm less interested in strictness in Policy than I am in finding
> > out how this is *specified* for all consumers, rather than merely
> > *implemented* in specific programs.
> 
> It's merely allowed by the specification as Russ mentioned it.
> There's no reason to specify it further, unless you're trying to
> parse the changelog entries and want to detect these names.

There's a disconnect there: I want to generate this data in such a way
that someone *else* can parse the changelog entries for these names.

Yes, there are existing tools to do it; but how can someone making a
*new* tool know that they're always generating the output correctly?
How can someone trying to parse output from various sources know
whether a parsing error is due to bad input or bad parsing?

It's probably a simple thing to specify. All the more reason for it to
be specified in one place, by the people who designed it, rather than
leave the question open of how to implement generators or parsers for
it.

-- 
 \              “When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir |
  `\                                              cevinpl.” —Anonymous |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney