Bug#218893: Alternative proposal: debian/format
On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 01:03:48PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 09:59:24AM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > Choose one:
> >
> > The first is to add a debian/rules.version with meaning:
> > debian/rules.version is present and is "1\n": build-arch and build-indep
> > are implemented
> >
> > The second is to add a debian/rules.targets with the list of available
> > optional targets.
[...]
> Why are we attaching a versioning concept only to the rules file?
> I think we should attach versioning to the entire layout of the unpacked
> source package.
> This gives us the flexibility to make other kinds of changes without
> cluttering debian/ with still more files.
> Consider a file debian/format:
> $ cat debian/format
> rules: 1
> control: 2
> The above tells dpkg that the package in question is using version 1 of
> the debian/rules specification, and version 2 of the debian/control
> specification. (We could retroactively define version 2 of
> debian/control as one that permits comments, for which dpkg recently
> added support.)
> The debian/format file can be extended arbitrarily to suit our needs.
> We could change the format of a debian/changelog file with this
> technique as well, if needed.
> Of course, version 1 is assumed for everything in the absence of a
> debian/format file.
> Comments?
The main point against it is the one Santiago Vila brought up. Using a
number to describe whether debian/rules supports build-arch has the
flaw that it suggests that a package not implementing build-arch
supports _only_ version 1, and should be updated.
And this is wrong as the majority of the source-packages in the
Debian-archive don't produce binary-arch _and_ binary-all packages,
and implementing an (empty) build-arch (or build-all) target in
debian/rules serves no practical purpose for these packages, it is
just cruft.
cu andreas
--
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