Bug#953554: Please permit Debian revisions with 1.0 native packages [and 1 more messages]

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Sean Whitton writes ("Re: Bug#953554: Please permit Debian revisions with 1.0 native packages [and 1 more messages]"):
> I believe that the relevant sentence of Policy, added in policy.git
> commit eee39aecef3a6a5f9927211b5c847e645e927cbd, was intended to be
> informative, not normative.  It does not use one of the Policy normative
> magic words, is not in the subsection in which it would be natural to
> place such a restriction, and occurs in a "hey, don't forget that ..."
> clause.

Oh yes.  I hadn't read this sentence from 3.2.1 in context.

I think "native package versions" refers to "versionn numbers which
are supposed to be Debian-native", not "the version numbers of
native-format packages".

Can I suggest that this sentence might be clarified as follows

  remember that hyphen (-) cannot be used in
  native {-package versions-}{+version numbers+}

?

> Thus the only Policy issue here could be the addition of an explicit
> permission to use Debian revisions with 1.0 native packages.  As
> discussion is ongoing in the context of Lintian, that seems premature,
> however.

Ideally I would like to see such an explicit permission.  It ought to
go into the section on source packages.  But it ought to have some
caveats (eg about size, perhaps, and about tracking changes to
upstream parts some other way eg via git).  I suspect that discussion
would be dispropornately long and fractious and inconclusive, compared
to the value to be gained.

> So I think we can close the clone of this bug against Policy for now.

The bugs seem very confusing to me.  A sprawling mass of
partially-duplicated stuff.  See my comment above for a suggested
wording clarification.

Ian.

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Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.  

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