Re: what needs to be policy?
Joey Hess wrote:
> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > FUD. If you are changing things in a incompatible fashion and
> > breaking other packages and policy, I sure hope t put additional
> > obstacles in your path. In fact, this is a prime argument for
> > putting sub policies under the policy change mechanism.
>
> You're ingoring the possibility that things may be changed in an
> incompatible way but with a structure in place to preserve backwards
> compatability. You're assumming that a package maintainer can not make any
> large changes in the interface to their package after it becomes widly used
> in debian, and this is flat out untrue.
^^
insert without breaking things
> Example: If the format of menu files changes, the menu maintainer should be
> free to make the new format the preferred format. They will of course be
> required to make the old format still work so they don't break tons of
> packages. This isn't hypothetical, this has happened.
>
> If the menu system changed in an incompatable fashion with no upgrade path
> it would break tons of packages and bug reports could justifiably be filed
> against menu for doing this. So there's no need for it to be policy.
>
> > Either they are debian policy, or they are not. If they are
> > not, then one may dismiss bug reports based on not following
> > them.
>
> No one may not. There are two valid reasons for a bug report:
>
> 1. A package breaks. It does not work, it does not install, whatever. This
> is _always_ a bug, it may not be dismissed for any reason.
>
> 2. A package is in violation of policy.
>
> There is no need to make something policy if not following that policy would
> lead to 1.
>
> --
> see shy jo, repeating himself
>
>
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--
see shy jo
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