On Fri, Sep 07, 2001 at 07:04:37PM -0700, Francois Gouget wrote:
> At first sight it would seem logical to simply send a bug report
> against cruft with all the updates but I think it would actually make
> much more sense to send bug reports against each package so that *they*
> and not cruft include these filter files. Here's why.
Once upon a time, back when cruft was brand new, the idea was that
packages should include a /var/lib/dpkg/info/foo.extrafiles-esque file
that cruft would look at. This, naturally enough, was going to require
a policy proposal and would hopefully get dpkg support (so dpkg -S
/etc/passwd would give you useful information, and so something similar
could happen for dpkg -L) and all would be rosy.
Unfortunately, there was some debate about whether the format cruft uses
(which has a special foo/** syntax for a * wildcard that matches /'s
as well as normal characters) is okay, or whether a standard globbing
system should've been used instead (I proposed what cruft currently uses,
Ian Jackson said a standard globbing function'd be better). No conclusion
ever got reached, the policy issue got lost when Christian Schwarz (sp?)
resigned as policy editor, and everyone who cared got distracted.
That's the history, anyway.
> So I'm very inclined to file a bug report for each package for which
> I wrote a new filter file. But I want to know about the community's
> feelings before I do that.
Things that all packages are meant to do should really be in
-policy. That's policy's entire raison d'etre, after all.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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