Re: What’s the use for Standards-Version?

[Romain Beauxis <toots@rastageeks.org>]

Le mercredi 12 août 2009 04:59:09, Josselin Mouette a écrit :
> AIUI, this header is here to indicate which version of the policy the
> package is supposed to conform to. This way, we have a way to enforce
> which policy versions are supported, e.g. in a stable release, by
> forbidding the too old versions.

Cleartly, that this field is not quite used at the moment. Clearly also, the 
packaging workflow nowadays tends to be driven by lintian checks. You do the 
update, you pass through the automated tests.

Some people remarked that, unfortunately, not all policy requirements can be 
automated, hence there is a difference between being lintian clean and 
conforming to the policy.

Some other remarked that it is a very time-consuming task to do all the 
checklist for every policy change, which is quite true.

But there could be another use of this field, which would fit into the test-
driven workflow. What about a tool that displays the changes in the policy 
based on the declared supported version and the latest version ?

This could display a simple checklist that the maintainer could check easily. 
This would also include only the relevant changes since the latest check, 
while we only have diff from one version to another.

Eventually, after going through the list, you could safetly update this field 
knowing and also save time.



Romain