Technical committee mails ?

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

I'm still not getting them here, which is where I was just told I was
subscribed.  Is that because there is no mail ?

I propose the following resolution:

 Given that:

 * Wichert has made an announcement saying we should preserve the
 status quo pending a decision;

 * it will obviously take a little while to make a decision,
 particularly given that the technical committee's internal mechanisms
 haven't been debugged yet because they've not previously been used;

 * packages already using /usr/share/doc may make whatever decision we
 come up with hard to implemement;

 * people on debian-policy have tried getting the policy reverted to
 preserve the status quo as requested by Wichert, with no avail;

 * no analysis of the changes between FSSTND and FHS seems to have
 been made to determine whether to make the change and if so how best
 to do it;

 The Technical Committee mandates that, firstly:

 * Until a the a list of the differences between FSSTND and FHS, with
 a decision whether to change and if applicable a transition plan for
 each, has been prepared, Debian should continue to use the FHS.

 And in particular:

 * Until a decision on transition to FHS directories has been made by
 the Committee, /usr/share/doc, /var/state and /var/mail should not
 yet be used to by Debian packages.  Instead, packages should continue
 to place files in and refer to /usr/doc, /var/lib and
 /var/spool/mail.

 Therefore:

 * The policy manual should immediately be amended accordingly
 immediately, to change the reference to the FHS back to the FSSTND,
 and to add a comment saying that /usr/share/doc, /var/state and
 /var/mail are not yet to be used or referred to.

 * If the policy editors or policy group feel it necessary to ratify
 this change to the policy manual with the formal policy process this
 should be done after the policy has been changed; the policy editors
 should change the policy manual and issue an updated version
 immediately.

 * Lintian and any other package checking software which has already
 made the change to FHS should be changed back.

Ian.