Re: Rewriting policy soonish if poss.
On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 12:08:03AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 07:33:44AM -0600, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 02:13:36AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > __Debian Standards Document__
> > > dpkg:
> > > * version format
> > > * maintainer scripts are run when and under what circumstances
>
> Both of these are irrelevant to just about everybody, I'd've thought.
> Version number comparison is checked with 'dpkg --compare-versions', and
> the format is checked automatically by various tools. I've never found
> it necessary to look at the details of either except when I'm poking at
> apt or dpkg's internals, or when I've needed to do something really weird.
I'm pretty sure maintainers frequently look at the specs of the
version number format; not every package has something as nice as
"2.3.2" as an upstream version number, and so knowing how version
numbers work is important.
But if this is the level of detail of our discussion, I think we're
doing fine!
> > > * what control file fields mean
>
> Again, _what_ the fields mean ("Essential: yes" -- you can't uninstall
> a package easily, "Depends: foo" -- don't install this package unless
> foo's already installed) is a separate issue to when/why they should
> be used, and what effects their use has ("Essential: yes" -- installed
> on all Debian systems, so doesn't require a "Depends" unless it's new,
> in which case you need a versioned dependency, because of this rule,
> essential packages need to work unconfigured, etc).
Developers need to know both when using them.
> > But with the wonders of XML includes, we can simply have the common
> > pieces in appropriate separate external files (or something cleverer,
> > but that's a detail) and include them in both places.
>
> I think you're getting a bit over excited about the wonders of XML...
8-)
> > In this way,
> > they will be both in the specs document (useful for specs!) and the
> > guidelines (useful for package developers) and always be in sync - yeah!
>
> Including them in the guidelines just gets in the way. That's what I
> was saying about trying to write up the BPP and finding the "version
> comparison, etc" section being uncomfortable. If package developers
> need them, they should look in the specs.
Maybe. Maybe not. We'll think about this on a case-by-case basis.
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
website: http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~jdg/
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see: http://people.debian.org/~jdg/
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