Question regarding policy wording
Hi,
I don't know whether this is a wording bug or actually a feature.
,---- Policy 12.5
| Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright
| and distribution license in the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright.
| This file must neither be compressed nor be a symbolic link.
`----
It is common practice that /usr/share/doc/<package>/ is a symlink to
/usr/share/doc/<other_package>/ if <package> Depends: <other_package>.
Therefore I don't see why the copyright file couldn't be a symlink to
/usr/share/doc/<other_package>/copyright.
As I understand it, the intention is to prevent constructions like
copyright -> README when the information is also there, or to some other
arbitrary file, or similar things.
But for source packages that create multiple binary packages, there's
usually only one copyright file, anyway, but it may not always be a good
choice to make the complete /usr/share/doc/<package>/ directory a
symlink.
Should I create a patch for the wording that allows symlinks to other
copyright files from the same source package?
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
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