Re: Standards-Version field should be deprecated

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

Ian Jackson wrote:
> Editing the Standards-Version field is surely a small task, compared
> to the work of checking the policy updates against the package.

Not necessarily.  You can check Policy once for the differences
introduced with a new version, determine quickly from the nature of the
changes that none of them can apply to any of your team's 500 packages,
and then have 500 packages to update.

I do see value in documenting the version of Policy a package complies
with.  However, I can also imagine some approaches to eliminate the
busywork.  For instance, define a missing Standards-Version (or an
explicit field like "Standards-Version: current") as meaning "complies
with the latest version of Policy as of the date of the last
debian/changelog entry".