Bug#183572: debian-policy: Documents are not useful from a practical standpoint
Package: debian-policy
Version: unavailable; reported 2003-03-06
Severity: normal
I'm not sure if this is a policy problem or a website problem or someone
else's problem.
As the dh-make maintainer, I often have to check that dh-make is doing
the right thing. This means that I try to follow policy and devel
reference as close as possible. It also means I probably read those
documents and need information from those documents more than the
average developer.
The documents consistently fail in answering my questions. Information
is either scattered all over the place, missing or difficult to find.
To use an example, what fields are in a debian/control file? What must
be there and what is optional and what do they all mean?
Maybe it's B3 of debian policy? Nope, that's out of date. C.2.2 has the
same problem. There is also confusion about the debian/control file
and tmp/package/DEBIAN/control file too, some fields are needed in one
but not the other.
Now maybe if you gather about 5 different sections and read a few others
for definitions, you will get the answer. But that's a lot of mucking
around for something that is supposed to be pretty fundamental.
To me a policy should be pretty clear on what is and is not required.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 2.2
Architecture: alpha
Kernel: Linux fozzie 2.4.20-xfs #2 Sun Feb 23 13:14:57 EST 2003 alpha
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
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