Re: [PROPOSED] Merging the packaging manual and policy packages
[Manoj - sorry about the extra message in your inbox. Forgot to send it to
the list the first time around]
Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> If we agree that the packaging manual has the weight of
> Policy,
Currently it does not. Someone needs to go over it with a fine-toothed comb
to pick out non-policy issues, and transfer them to a third document,
perhaps entitled "Packaging Hints" or something. Better yet, rename the
whole document and then feed information gradually from policy and it to the
new Packaging Manual.
> I propose, as a purely packaging issue, to pull the two
> packages (not the documents -- the policy and the packaging manuals
> shall remain distinct documents). The policy manual package already
> contains the FSSTND document, so this merger is not without
> precedent.
This act by itself I do not have any problem with. I would not complain if
the two documents were in the same package. However, pretending the
Packaging Manual is policy is a bad idea. It was a reference guide
previously.
Tread carefully here - you entered into this conversation by rewriting
history and are now severely underestimating the consequences of your
actions.
If you wish to turn the Policy manual into the Debian political policy
and the Packaging manual into the Debian technical policy, know that I
am in favor of such a thing. But don't pretend that there are no content
changes to be made.
Should such a change be made, the policy minor version should be
incremented to 2.6.
> Rationale:
> a) There should only be one Standards-Version that Debian packages
> use, and lintian checks for. Unless the pacdkaging manual and the
> policy manual are merged into one package (note: *not* one
> document), version skew is unavoidable.
Version skew is a short-term problem. Standards-Version compliance is a
long-term problem.
I don't see an issue there.
...Unless of course you feel lintian should be merged in with policy
as well so there's no version skew with that either. :>
> b) Both these packages are managed by the same group, and if the
> pacaging manual is acknowledged to be policy, the contents are
> under the control of the similar processes; merging the packages
> avoids duplication.
Indeed. There is a lot of duplication/overlap between the Packaging
Manual and policy, with the policy being much less verbose, because
it has historically been the right/wrong separator. For example,
look at what our policy says about package names:
2.3.1. The package name
-----------------------
Every package must have a name that's unique within the Debian
archive.
Package names may only consist of lower case letters, digits (0-9),
plus (+) or minus (-) signs, and periods (.).
The package name is part of the file name of the `.deb' file and is
included in the control field information.
And this is what our Packaging Manual says:
4.2.1. `Package'
-----------------
The name of the binary package. Package names consist of the
alphanumerics and `+' `-' `.' (plus, minus and full stop). [1]
[1] The characters `@' `:' `=' `%' `_' (at, colon, equals, percent
and underscore) used to be legal and are still accepted when
found in a package file, but may not be used in new packages
They must be at least two characters and must start with an
alphanumeric. In current versions of dpkg they are sort of
case-sensitive[1]; use lowercase package names unless the package
you're building (or referring to, in other fields) is already using
uppercase.
[1] This is a bug.
> c) It makes it easier to say what package to install to learn about
> *all* Debian Policy documents ;-)
This I agree with.
--
Robert Woodcock - rcw@debian.org
"Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses" -- Richard Gabriel
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