Re: Release management and package announcements

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk> said:

> >    Somehow the FTP site maintainer's programs also need to know which
> >    section (subdirectory) the files should go in.  I suggest that this
> >    information be provided by the `overrides' file on the FTP site, which
> >    is already used by the npdpkg program which generates the Packages
> >    files.
> > 
> > Agreed.  I don't think the location should be decided by individual
> > package maintainers, though they will be free to suggest a location.
> 
> The Section field from the control file can be used for this.

I agree also that this should be decided centrally, but disagree about
using the SECTION field for a maintainer's recommendations.  If we
do that, "dpkg --info" and "dpkg --status" will give misleading
information to users.

If the SECTION field is not going to reliably contain the section name
where the package is placed, it should be eliminated.