Bug#741573: Two menu systems
On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:04:12 Ian Jackson wrote:
> Stuart Prescott writes ("Bug#741573: Two menu systems"):
> > Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > I think you are perfectly entitled to let the people who care about
> > > the Debian menu take care of that testing.
> >
> > As others have pointed out, that's a level a lot lower in everyone's
> > current understanding of what "should" means in the context of policy.
> > This may not be what was intended by the policy authors, but I think the
> > average maintainer reads "should" as something that *they* are supposed
> > to do unless they have a good technical reason. As Russ has pointed out,
> > that is certainly how it is presented to new maintainers in our mentors
> > process and there is an expectation there that the maintainer (not some
> > other 3rd party) is will ensure that their packages conform to the
> > million little "should"s in policy.
> >
> > Policy already lists "may" as the word to use for things that are
> > optional. To me, Ian's statement above sounds a lot like a suggestion
> > that packages *may* provide trad menu files, not *should* provide.
>
> The problem with "may" is that it suggests that there can be
> situations where it is better not to provide a trad menu entry even in
> cases where the policy on trad menu entries currently says that one
> "should". It implies that a judgement needs to be made between two
> equally good options.
>
> I don't imagine you're proposing changing the wording of the sections
> of policy on doc-base entries, manpages, etc. to "may".
Indeed I am not proposing that. I believe those are things that the maintainer
should provide as part of the package.
> If we need to distinguish situations where we expect the maintainer to
> normally do the work before uploading, and ones where we don't
> necessarily, perhaps we need a new wording.
I think we've already got that in "should" and "may".
Stuart
--
Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ stuart@nanonanonano.net
Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ stuart@debian.org
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