Re: Alternative names in upstream changelogs
On 01-May-00, 00:38 (CDT), Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> wrote:
> Steve Greenland wrote:
> > Debian policy requires that the upstream changelog be accessible as
> > /usr/share/doc/<package>/changelog.gz. Some (many?) authors use an
> > alternative name for their changelog, with "CHANGES" seeming to be the
> > most popular. What is the appropriate thing to do?
>
> Note that I considered this some when adding the -k flag to
> dh_installchangelogs.
>
> > 1. Copy to changelog and compress?
>
> Fine if you don't care about preserving the name. It can be important to
> preserve the name if some other document refers to CHANGES, or if
> you think the upstream author might refer to the CHANGES sometime or
> be annoyed that you renamed it.
>
> I don't think something should go in policy that outlaws this option
> and mandates on of the below options.
Would expand a little on this? You seem to disaprove of not providing
the change log under its original name (modulo .gz) (and I agree), but
then don't think policy should forbid it, and more to the point, the
default of dh_installchangelogs isn't '-k'.
> > 2a. Copy as CHANGES, compress, and 'ln -s CHANGES.gz changelog.gz'?
>
> This has the bad property of not letting you pull
> usr/share/doc/<package>/changelog.gz out of a .deb and actually get the
> changelog. Getting a symlink instead isn't very nice. One reason to want
> a single standard changelog name is so it can be automatically
> extracted, similar to the copyright file.
Ahh, this may explain why the www.debian.org package browser sometimes
fails to come up with a changelog.
> > 3. Copy as CHANGES, compress, and copy to changelog.gz?
>
> I don't understand how this is different than 5 or 6 (one or the other,
> not both; what you're saying is unclear to me).
>
> > 4. Copy as CHANGES, copy to changelog, and compress both?
> > 5. Copy as CHANGES, copy to changelog, and compress only changelog?
> > 6. Copy as CHANGES, compress, and ignore policy?
The difference (of 3) from 4 is that the compressed files are not
identical (see /usr/share/doc/jdk1.1, lprng). The difference from
5 is that only changelog.gz is compressed; CHANGES is not (see
/usr/share/doc/groovycd). The difference from 6 is that there is no
changelog.gz -- a policy violation (bash!).
> Wow, that is very suprising, I would have expected 2b to be more popular
> since debhelper does it that way.
Notice "small sample", there are 12 packages on my system with a file in
the doc/foo directory beginning with "CHANG". I was somewhat stunned to
find 7 different ways of dealing with it. Given the variety, I think I
will propose an ammendment.
Thanks,
Steve
Reply to: