Bug#88029: allow rules file to be non-makefile
On Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 04:14:45PM +0100, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> It would make the Policy consistent. Currently, it allows maintainer scripts
> to be anything you would like. The only thing that is required is that they
> must be proper executables. They can even be binaries. Then why does the
> Policy force everybode to write the rules file as a Makefile ?
Sometimes maintainer scripts *have* to be binaries, because they
can't rely on a working interpreter. The postinst for libreadline
had that at one time.
No such requirement exists for rules files.
In practice, the only languages available for maintainer scripts
are shell and perl, because those are the Essential interpreters.
(I guess awk might work because an Essential package depends on it,
but I wouldn't want to rely on that without verification.)
Richard Braakman
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