Re: Some upcoming dpkg changes, test and feedback welcome
* Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> [110922 13:59]:
> We can imagine more use cases in the context of other distributions than
> Debian. Ubuntu for example could want to adjust the behaviour when
> targetting a source packages for an older release (since they always use
> the codename in that field).
>
> > Currently I can only see possible abuses but no proper uses for it, so
> > unless there is something I miss, I'd rather request that variable to
> > be removed, as it can only harm.
>
> What kind of abuses do you see?
Anything that does not error out but changes behaviour.
In your second example above for example, you get a package that would
silently change behaviour if doing a locally modified version.
Or imagine someone having the 'bright idea' to have something that
behaves differently if that field is 'stable-proposed-updates', so that
a following upload (once the package reached testing) of that package
targeting a point release would not show differences but the changelog.
Then if that package gets in there and someone later wants to do a
security upload, the source package from stable will suddenly behave
differently, because not the distribution field is different.
Bernhard R. Link
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