Re: Standards-Version field should be deprecated
Markus Koschany <apo@debian.org> writes:
> I have written a macro to update the Standards-Version field because it
> is such a boring task. Declaring compliance with the Policy over and
> over again by updating this field and mentioning it in the d/changelog,
> doesn't strike me as being a useful task. There are better ways to
> determine bit rot IMO.
If Lintian says that the Standards-Version field is out of date, I then
open /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.txt.gz, scroll down
to the current value of Standards-Version, and then read backwards to the
top, checking each item against my knowledge of the package to see if
there's anything I need to update. Then I update Standards-Version in the
packaging.
If you're just automatically updating it without ever looking at how
Policy has changed, then yes, it's not useful. And I don't think it's
very useful to publish. But if you use it as a bookmark for the
maintainer so that you know what version you last checked the package
against and therefore what bits of the upgrading checklist you need to
check, I think it's pretty helpful.
I will say, though, that it's much more useful for individual packages
than it is for large sets of team-maintained packages where you're more
likely to change Policy-related things across all packages at once.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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