Bug#357162: debian-policy: preserve /usr/share/doc/*/* timestamps
Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org> writes:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 3.6.2.1
> Severity: wishlist
> Many /usr/share/doc/*/* file maintainers don't
> cp --preserve=timestamps (cp -p) their updates. Thus upon ls -l,
> README.blorg looks like it was updated yesterday, when in fact it
> hasn't changed since 2002, upstream or downstream.
> I recall somewhere in some documents a recommendation on keeping
> original dates, but even many of the sharpest Debian developers aren't
> hip to cp -p, or cp -a yet. There must be hundreds of packages like
> this. I suppose I shall find that policy paragraph and file a wishlist
> bug against such a package when I encounter it.
Far more productive than filing a bug against policy would be to look at
patterns in packages that don't preserve timestamps and see if there are
tools that could be updated. dh_installdocs does preserve timestamps, so
any package that uses debhelper will only have this issue if the
documentation files are installed outside of the debhelper scripts.
I don't think policy is the appropriate forum for this sort of suggestion.
The Developer's Reference would be a better place to put it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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