Re: More updates for the policy
On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Andreas Barth wrote:
> My impression was that we *did* a decision how to handle the
> meta-information, and just didn't decide about the implementation.
You can review the video of the BoF but I don't have time for that.
> > common denominator that I have found on which both parties could agree.
>
> A Standards-Version-Header is definitly a good idea, I agree on that.
Good.
> However, I'd really like to see more information in the control-part -
> like we see e.g. the maintainer or build-dependencies listed there
> (without the real technical need, all that could be extracted from
> debian/control as well).
Then please ask people to use XS-Python-Version and XS-Python-Standards-Versions
together. And over time, if it has technical merits, it will win.
Today, you can perfectly use the new python-support with the
X[SB]s-Python-Version fields but you can also use it without.
> > I only know two reasons for those headers:
> > - python-central use them for its internal work
> > - it may help track a transition and discover which packages need to be
> > updated
> >
> > BTW, the syntax of the Python-Version field comes directly from
> > python-central and it has not been discussed if the current syntax is the
> > best needed to achieve the second point.
>
> Obviously, nobody hit by the second purpose (which includes me) has any
> issue with the current syntax. Otherwise, I would have said something.
You expressed concerns on the syntax on IRC. Because the "," means "or" in somes
cases like "2.1, 2.2" and it means "and" in some other cases ">= 2.2, << 2.5".
Also if the field describes the list of python versions that the package
can work with, then the "current" value has no meaning... current exists
only to let the maintainer build only for the current python version.
Which is orthogonal to the meaning of the field.
> > I can easily find out packages which need to be updated for a python
> > transition by looking for packages with a dependency "python (<< 2.X)".
>
> not necessarily, if we e.g. just add a new python suite - i.e. at the
> start of a transition. Also, sometimes one wants to check what problems
> will occur without doing the transition at the same time.
Well, you're confused if I have "python (<< 2.5)" it means the package
won't work with python2.5 right now and also that the extension (for arch:
any packages) has not yet been compiled for python2.5.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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