Hi Team,
Sean, I've CCed you because you can authoritatively answer one question
I'm not 100% sure about, and to convey the importance of meaningful
changelog entries. Search for "Sean" to find those two points.
David Krauser <david@krauser.org> writes:
> On Thursday, October 31, 2019 2:35 PM, Nicholas D Steeves wrote:
>> The following brief list consists of things that your sponsor will ask you to check and if necessary fix.
>
> Thank you for this list - definitely helpful.
>
>> Policy upgrade checklist and Policy compliance.
>
> I'm unsure what this line item entails. Would you mind providing more details or directing me to the relevant documentation? You said this is the most important item on the list, so I want to make sure I get it right :-)
>
I understand :-) That said, part of this item is learning how to find
relevant Debian documentation. Here are some hints:
Debian Policy is found on debian.org and also in the "debian-policy"
package. If you use the copy from the package, take care to use the
latest version in sid. The introduction to the manual and §1.1 "Scope"
answers the question "What is Debian Policy?"
The current version is x.y.z.t (up to you to discover!), but the trailing
".t" is dropped in the declared "Standards-Version" in control. Sean,
I've always wondered why this was the case and supposed that this is
because the ".t" is not significant enough to merit a new
Standards-Version, or possibly because the Standards-Version schema is
major.minor.patch_version (semantic versioning), where the ".t" is only
used for thing like typo fixes in Policy. Please comment :-)
Declaring a particular "Standards-Version" in debian/control declares
compliance with that version of Policy. Please take care to write a
changelog point to that affect, and not just "* Bump standards-version".
If no changes are required, please note this. If all issues have been
resolved by existing changelog points in the entry then it's ok to write
"* Declare compliance with Policy x.y.z (no further changes required)".
Personally I like to list changes required for compliance like this:
* Declare compliance with… (Or Declare Standards-version foo)…
- First item.
- Second item.
because this highlights that the changes were made specifically to
address Policy compliance (eg: not just changes for the sake of making
changes); this subpoint style is a matter of style/preference/taste and
is optional. Sean, would you please say something about why meaningful
changelog entries are important, and why "* Bump standards-version"
isn't meaningful?
The Policy "Upgrading Checklist" is found in Appendix 10 of "Policy" and
is also available as a standalone document.
If a package violates a "must" or "required" directive from Policy that
packages has a "serious" level bug, which is RC (release critical) and
if such a bug exists the package is removed from testing.
(https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities) If the bug is not
resolved before the "soft freeze" then the package will not be part of the
next Debian release. For a historical example, see the following for
buster: https://release.debian.org/buster/freeze_policy.html
Key term "no re-entry".
At some point the release team will update this document for bullseye:
https://release.debian.org/bullseye/freeze_policy.html
>> Then submit a MR and mention @sten-guest so I'll recieve a notice.
>
> Can do.
>
Thanks! P.S. I forget are you doing evil-el or undo-tree first?
Cheers,
Nicholas
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature