Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
Tested patches against all init-script using packages to the BTS.
So from now on, we'll only change Policy after all packages comply with the proposed changes? We'll never make large progress if it's handled this way. And how do we implement incompatible changes?
Implementing a proposed change first before modifying Policy makes sense if we need a special feature in a single package like dpkg or menu (update-menus) but not if a lot of packages should offer a new feature like in this case. Implementing status for init scripts is not difficult in most cases since "start-stop-daemon --test" already offers this feature. The move to /usr/share/doc or the addition of build dependencies were also specified in Policy before all packages had a patch in the BTS.
Isn't this what Standards-Version: is for? Packages specify which version of the Debian Policy they comply with and at some point in time the RM defines the minimal Policy version for a release. The severity of bugs is raised if a package's standards version is too low.
Making this change to Policy does not mean than all packages must change their init script immediately, or did I misunderstand something?
Stefan