Policy rewrite: chaps 3-6
Well, I've now gone through the whole of policy making notes and
comments, but rather than write a hugely long email, I'm going to
write a few shorter ones and spread them out over a few weeks so that
people have a chance to digest the material.
Again, I am only going to talk about major things, and not typos or
other cosmetic improvements.
Ch. 3, intro: There seems to be some confusion between the terms
"control files" and "control data". Any suggestions how to clarify
this issue? Also, "control data" then becomes "fields and values",
but sometimes "fields" is used to include the value. So confusing!
3.2.4: I would like to replace the last part (Distribution names
follow the rules for package names. ...) with: "Valid distribution
names are determined by the archive maintainers", with the footnote
describing current practice.
3.2.4, footnote:
"Except in unusual circumstances, installations to stable should
also go into frozen (if it exists) and unstable. Likewise,
installations into frozen should also go into unstable."
But in reality, we don't do this: if a security hole is found, we
backport it and release different versions into stable and
unstable. So this needs rewriting or removing.
4, debian-revision: Should we add a footnote suggesting that where the
package is intended for general distribution beyond Debian and the
upstream maintainer = Debian maintainer, it is wise to split the
package as upstream and Debian parts, or is this too contentious?
5.1 Time stamps: "Maintainers are encouraged to preserve the
modification times of the upstream source files in a package, as
far as is reasonably possible. Even though this is optional, this
is still a good idea." ->
"Maintainers SHOULD preserve ... reasonably possible."
and preserve the footnote.
5.3 footnote: about author = Debian maintainer; should this discourage
this scenario?
5.3: There should be a footnote about urgency values.
5.3: There should be a description of the "closes: #nnnnn" syntax.
5.7.1: "The extended description ... for example, which subsystem it
is which part of." What is that meant to mean?
6.1: "These scripts _should be_ the files preinst, ...." ->
"These scripts _are_ the files preinst, ...."
And then it says: "The must be proper executable files; ...". What
does that mean?
6.5: There is something really unclear here: "if an error occurs" we
have error unwinding, but then later on, we have the possibility of
scripts running but exiting with non-zero exit status, which does
not lead to error unwinding. Or does it? Wichert: please could
you clarify what dpkg does, or should this not be in policy?
6.5: --force-overwrite is not currently enabled; this sentence should
be removed.
6.6: A little more info about updating the conffiles would be wise
here.
That's enough for today!
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://people.debian.org/~jdg
Donate free food to the world's hungry: see http://www.thehungersite.com/
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