Re: debmake: changelog.Debian should be always compressed

[Juan Cespedes <cespedes@debian.org>]

[moved to debian-policy]

On Fri, 7 Nov 1997, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> The concern of the policy with the changelog is that it should be
> compressed because of its growth. The maintainer might forget. But debstd
> will compress the changelog automatically if its grows to be bigger than
> 4K and thus it fulfills the aim of the policy of not letting the file grow
> unnecessarily big. This was the understanding so far as discussed on
> debian-devel in the past.
	[...]
> There is no "changing this issue". The way debmake does things was
> discussed ages ago and found to be fulfilling the policy.

	I disagree.  I don't know if this was discussed or not (I
usually don't take much care about debmake discussions), but I can't
find anywhere in the Debian Policy about compressing changelog files
only when they grow too much.  I only see this:

> 	Debian Policy Manual, version 2.3.0.1:
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      Any additional documentation that comes with the package can be
>      installed at the discretion of the package maintainer. Text
>      documentation should be installed in a directory `/usr/doc/<package>',
>      where <package> is the name of the package, and compressed with `gzip
>      -9' unless it is small.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

	OK, then the *additional documentation* shouldn't be compressed
if it's small, but...:

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 5.8. Changelog files
> --------------------
> 
>      This installed file must contain a copy of the `debian/changelog' file
>      from your Debian source tree, and a copy of the upstream changelog
>      file if there is one. They should usually be installed in
>      `/usr/doc/<package>' as `changelog.Debian.gz' and `changelog.gz'
>      respectively.
> 
>      Both should be installed compressed using `gzip -9', as they will
>      become large with time even if they start out small.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

	So, changelog's should *always* be compressed.  Of course, you
may say that `should' isn't enough for you, but I think it's enough to
send a bug report.

	If it was discussed and a decission against the current Poliy
was taken, then it should be clear and changed in future versions.
However, I like the way it is; I thing it's a good think having the
copyright always uncompressed, and the changelog's always compressed.

	Comments?

-- 
Juan Cespedes