Bug#331532: [PROPOSAL] change §10.4 "set -e OR check return status" to AND or be rewritten

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Ben Finney writes ("Bug#331532: [PROPOSAL] change §10.4 "set -e OR check return status" to AND or be rewritten"):
> The final question is: Why is this necessary in policy? If this were
> not implemented, would any of these programming errors *not* warrant
> an important bug? If it's already grounds for a bug report, what good
> is done by proscribing it in policy?

The lack of `set -e' is the single most common mistake in maintainer
scripts.  Or at least, at the time I added that sentence, it was.

I agree that the policy manual shouldn't be a general repository for
listing bugs not to have.  But surely it's sensible to mention the one
or two obvious bugs that so many people get wrong ?

Like any bit of the policy manual, it's there to tell you how things
probably ought to be done.  If you have a good reason not to do as it
says then you should do something else !

Ian.