On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 02:02:44PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> I'd see it as a problem if there were some best
> practice in policy that was implemented by a good fraction of the
> packages but the release team were not willing to accept that practice
> as a release requirement.
Nope, no chance of that. Release requirements are the _bare minimum_
requirements that package must satisfy. The simplest counter-example
is documentation. It's certainly best practice to write good user
documentation for all our programs and packages. While we mightn't
be there yet, I'd certainly hope that one day more than just "a good
fraction" of packages have good documentation. But nevertheless, I expect
we'll still be willing to accept new, undocumented or poorly-documented
packages in Debian when they have useful new features that aren't otherwise
available.
Sure, not having documentation is still a bug, and it should be filed
and fixed, but that's a _far_ stretch from not being willing to make
the package available to users.
Again: there is _no_ need to think of policy as a stick to beat people
over the head with. We're _all_ sensible people who want to make Debian
the highest quality software distribution in existance, even if we
might disagree on how to go about it. We don't need to coerce people
with threats for every trivial little thing, and it's probably actively
harmful to try to do so. Policy's at its best when it simply says what
should be done, and explains why doing other things isn't as good;
not when it declares such-n-such must be done, lest the wrath of the
release manager descend upon you all.
Is having documentation for all your programs Debian best practice? Is
it Debian's policy to have documentation for all programs? Does Debian
require all programs to have documentation?
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Is this some kind of psych test?
Am I getting paid for this?''
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