Re: Debian Policy 4.1.4.0 released

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Sean Whitton wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11 2018, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> I'm pretty reluctant to specify this sort of optional target that
>> works differently in every package that uses it back in Policy because
>> it's really not standardized, nor do I think it's possible to
>> standardize.  If we really want to write something down about the
>> target, maybe the Developer's Reference would be a better spot?  There
>> were a whole host of issues with having this in Policy that were
>> resolved by moving it outside the scope of Policy, such as how to
>> document dependencies required for running the get-orig-source target.
>
> The Developer's Reference seems like a more appropriate place for a
> convention that it is not possible to specify precisely.

I'm a bit confused: wasn't it already specified pretty precisely?

I would be in favor of adding the target back, with a description
along the lines of "If you provide a get-orig-source target, it should
satisfy <this interface>.  If you provide neither a get-orig-source
target nor a debian/watch file and you do not use an archive from
upstream as-is, please include clear instructions in README.source to
allow a human to produce an upstream tarball."

Context: I have run into a few packages that used the +dfsg convention
without documenting what they removed from the tarball and I was not
able to locally update them. :(

Thanks,
Jonathan