Bug#556015: Clarify requirements for copyright file

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, 04 Jul 2010, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Here's the question: should we say flat-out that both packages must
>> either be architecture-dependent or architecture-independent and then
>> say that the dependency must use (= <version>), or should we allow what
>> I was trying to allow above and then document, such as in a footnote,
>> the technique of depending on (>= <version>), (<< <version>+b99)? The
>> latter, as mentioned, may hide binNMU changelog entries.

> The changelog really documents the changes in the versions of the source
> package, not changes in the binary package.

Well, they do, in that binNMUs do change the changelog included in the
package.  I'm inclined to agree that it's not a big deal if we lose that
information in the installed package, though.

> Since a binary rebuild doesn't involve any changes to the source
> package, it should be ok to link to the same changelog. In all such
> cases, you should have an exact dependency on the source version of the
> architecture independent package, which needs to be the same as its
> binary version.  (In the case of an architecture dependent package, it
> should be the binary version, of course.)

any -> any can use (= ${binary:Version})
any -> all can use (= ${source:Version})
all -> all can use (= ${source:Version})

The question is what to do for all -> any.  Right now, I think best
practice is to do something like:

    (>= ${source:Version}), (<< ${source:Version}+b99)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>