Let's just convert debhelper and do NMUs
On the /usr/share/doc vs. /usr/doc issue....
Given that:
- we're going in circles at present
- dpkg is unlikely to be fixed in the near future, and relying on the
user having a working dpkg is a dangerous assumption
- most packages use either debhelper or debstd
why don't we follow the Perl team's lead by modifying debhelper
appropriately (I believe debstd has already been done) and giving a
month's notice to all developers about rebuilding their packages with
the new /usr/share/doc location using the new debhelper/debstd if they
use those tools. Any packages which have not been so modified in that
period can be auto-rebuilt if they use deb{helper,std}, leaving a
relatively small number of packages using /usr/doc which will need
manual NMUs. And all that would be necessary in the short term for
those packages would be
mkdir debian/tmp/usr/share; mv debian/tmp/usr/doc debian/tmp/usr/share
or similar in the appropriate place in the debian/rules file.
I think that with a change as large as this, people must expect
inconsistencies if they perform partial upgrades/downgrades. And the
longer we don't do anything, the closer we will be to release and the
harder it will become.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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