Re: source package descriptions: subtsvars are not enough

[Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org>]

[Stefano Zacchiroli]
> To fix that, it seems to me that the most reasonable solution
> advanced in the thread is to add a proper "Description" field to
> source package stanzas. Then, in addition, we can setup an automatic
> substvar, whose content is the source description, that can then be
> used in package description stanzas to interpolate the source
> description.

Yes, I think pretty much everyone agrees that this would be the most
reasonable approach.

I wonder if, in addition (or perhaps instead of the above), it is
useful to have a substvar for just the _first paragraph_ of the source
Description.  What I'm thinking about is a short blurb you want to copy
into all your binary packages, but perhaps there is _more_ information
you also want to put in the source Description, which it wouldn't be
useful to copy everywhere.

In particular, I do think a single paragraph should always be
sufficient for copying into a binary Description.  We don't want those
things to get too long!  The question then is, might it be useful to
have a longer description in the source package?  I do not know.
Perhaps this additional information always belongs instead in the
diff.tar.gz somewhere, like debian/source.README.
-- 
Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/