Packaging Manual vs. dpkg Programmers' Manual
As you will probably know, I'm planning to get back to serious work on
dpkg. I've already started looking at some of the NMU releases, and
see that I have much work ahead of me. I think it will probably be a
number of months before I have a source tree that I feel I could call
my own which can take the place of the current NMU series.
One of the changes that occurred during my absence from dpkg was that
the policy and programmers' manuals (which I wrote originally) were
removed from dpkg and put into a separate package, and the "dpkg
Programmers' Manual" was renamed the "Debian Packaging Manual".
I probably don't have time to maintain the policy manual given the
amount of work that needs to be done on dpkg proper, and in any case
it's clear that an attempt by me to take the policy manual back would
involve quite a political fight, so I'll rule that out for now without
considering very much whether I would really want to.
However, the erstwhile dpkg programmers' manual was exactly what it
said: it was the documentation for dpkg and dselect. It described how
the programs worked and how they should be used, rather than how to
produce a Debian package.
When I have finished sorting out the code in dpkg and start
considering new code, I will probably want to take the current
Packaging Manual back into the dpkg package, and rename it back.
When I do this I'll go through it and find all the parts that are not
documentation for dpkg, dselect, or their file formats, and remove
them into another file or document, so that they can be incorporated
into other manuals such as the policy manual.
At this stage, I'm giving people a heads-up about this plan. Also, it
seems likely that there might be some *ahem* discussion about it,
which I'd like to get out of the way ...
Ian.
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