On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 10:50:46AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: > Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes: > > Sbuild explicitely, by design, only looks at build-depends. So in order > > for build-depends to be useful at this time if you want a package to > > build, you need to list mostly everything in build-depends right now > > anyway. > > Isn't it sbuild's job to comply with policy, not the other way round? No. Policy is not a stick to beat people with. Our Policy document is not flawless, and errors have been known to occur in Policy before. While an inconsistency between Policy and an individual package is usually a bug in the package rather than a bug in Policy, the same is not true for highly influential implementations of whatever Policy happens to say; e.g., if the definition of the dpkg file format in policy differs from the actual implementation in dpkg, then we usually consider Policy to be either outdated or buggy, since in that particular case, stuff was written for Policy to document existing practice to people not familiar with the dpkg innards. The same is true for buildd/sbuild and build-dependencies; since build-dependencies were defined in Debian to make autobuilding possible, it would be madness to require that buildd and sbuild jump through every hoop that a high enough number of developers (i.e., 5) can come up with and get through the policy process. Therefore, if the implementation of sbuild differs from whatever Policy happens to claim, then Policy is simply wrong. -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
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