Objection to change made in debian policy
Package: debian-policy
In version 1.23 of the policy.sgml file Manoj made a few changes
that were related to incorporating the packaging manual into
policy.
Since the packaging manual did not have policy status this should
not have changed anything in policy, certainly not without a clear
consensus.
The change I am objecting to is this bit:
+ <p>
+ This file must be an executable makefile, and contains the
+ package-specific recipes for compiling the package and
+ building binary package(s) out of the source.
+ </p>
There never was a consensus that debian/rules has to be a makefile.
This was discussed but the only consensus that was reached was that
policy should dictate the interface to debian/rules.
I suggest we either try to get a consensus on this, or downgrade the
must to a recommendation.
Personally I increasingly feel that make is not the right format for
debian/rules. rules files are getting more complex with and expressing
all the needed commands in make is becoming increasingly awkward. For
this reason I want to have the freedom to use another method (a sh
script), which is perfectly possible with the documented interface
to debian/rules, except for this requirement that silently slipped
into the policy document.
Wichert.
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