Re: New packaging manual draft
>>"Joey" == Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:
Joey> I've seen some typos and typographical errors but I won't
Joey> bother to detail them at this point.
I have now run the manual thriguh ispell, so things should be
better. A new version resides, as usual, at the location:
http://master.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/new-packaging.txt
Joey> Each paragraph is a series of fields and values; each field consists
Joey> of a name, followed by a colon and the value. It ends at the end of
Joey> the line. Horizontal whitespace (spaces and tabs) may occur before or
Joey> after the value and is ignored there; it is conventional to put a
Joey> single space after the colon.
Joey> Is the space before the colon truely optional? I expect
Joey> there's some broken code out there if so. RFC 822 does allow
Joey> it. I
Umm, what space before the colon? We say it has a neme, a
colon (see, no space), and a value. The value may have spaces aroud it
(that would be after the colon). What am I missing?
Joey> think you should point to that RFC in that section BTW, even
Joey> though control file format varies from it in several ways.
Color me puzzled. If we are so different from teh RFC, why
should we mention it?
I have fixed the wording about things being two characters
long.
Joey> The list of distributions values and their descriptions seem
Joey> out of place. In several places it seems to be talking to the
Joey> end user.
I have updated the list to use the same syntax as the policy
manual, and put it into a footnote, so this is now
informational. This paves the way for totally new formats of
distributions and sections with the poackage pool ;-)
Joey> Oh yeah, the timeframes (4 month release cycle, 4 week freezes)
Joey> in this text are ludicrously optimistic. Just another
Joey> indication, I think, that the text in the distribution list
Joey> descriptions doesn't belong in policy at all.
I removed the time frames.
Joey> In the section on changelogs, when it shows the format, the asterisks
Joey> are not indented, while it later says they must be indented by 2 spaces.
Joey> Also, the "--" line looks indented wrong (in w3m anyway).
Joey> While section 5.4 is of course very useful and important information, I
Joey> question the value of including it in policy.
It specifies under what circumstances the scripts are called,
and what the maitnainer script writers are expected to
handle. Inclusion here makes it a standard public API, and would
require a public peer review to change.
Joey> If someone decides to go make dpkg even more robust, and deal
Joey> with problems after that point and manage to back off after
Joey> that point, it would be technically in violation of policy. I
Joey> see no reason to put such a damper on future progress.
I do not think that this is meant to be a fault of the
packaging system. There has to be a point of no return -- and this
documents where that point is. I would much rather have a well known
point of no return -- and perhaps code accordingly, than not.
Joey> I have similar problems with parts of sections 5.5 and 5.6.
Similarily, I thik these make the API's standard.
Joey> Ok, I lost steam here, will continue later.
Thanks for your input
manoj
--
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind at
all. How true that is." -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro
College Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May
22nd, 1989)
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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