Hi all, Ian, and thanks for your work on this!
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 04:01:21PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> 8. The Technical Committee resolves that alternative dependencies of
> the form "Depends: package-in-main | package-in-non-free"
> constitute a non-release-critical violation of the policy
> clause cited in point 1.
>
> 9. When it is necessary to provide a reference in a Depends or
> Recommends from main to non-free, this should be done via a
> neutrally named virtual package.
>
> 10. The Technical Committee requests that the policy editors make
> an appropriate clarification to the policy documents.
About point (9.), and considering the past discussion on the matter
we've had with Colin [1], I suggest to expand it as follows:
9. When it is necessary to provide a reference in a Depends or
Recommends from main to non-free, this should be done via a
neutrally named virtual package. When depending on such a virtual
package, other packages should specify a real package in main as
the first alternative, e.g.
"Depends: package-in-main | virtual-interface".
This might be paranoia on my side, but I'm really worried that, by not
following the above best practice, we risk losing some explicit
preferences for main packages that are currently expressed in the
archive and effective during dependency resolution. I do realize that
the most appropriate place where to document this would be the Policy,
but I doubt it would hurt to mention it in the tech-ctte resolution;
quite the contrary, IMHO.
Cheers.
[1]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=681419#147
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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