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Bug#438492: marked as done (Policies copyright rule doesn't fit empty transitional packages)

Your message dated Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:30:25 -0700
with message-id <[🔎] 873anosdce.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
and subject line Rejected: Bug#438492: Policies copyright rule doesn't fit empty transitional packages
has caused the Debian Bug report #438492,
regarding Policies copyright rule doesn't fit empty transitional packages
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
438492: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=438492
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: policy
Severity: normal

Policy says:
> 12.5 Copyright information
>
> 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.
>
> In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
> (if any) were obtained. It should name the original authors of the
> package and the Debian maintainer(s) who were involved with its
> creation.
>
> A copy of the file which will be installed in
> /usr/share/doc/package/copyright should be in debian/copyright in
> the source package.
>
> /usr/share/doc/package may be a symbolic link to another directory
> in /usr/share/doc only if the two packages both come from the same
> source and the first package Depends on the second. These rules are
> important because copyrights must be extractable by mechanical
> means.
>
> Packages distributed under the UCB BSD license, the Artistic
> license, the GNU GPL, and the GNU LGPL, should refer to the
> corresponding files under /usr/share/common-licenses,[82] rather
> than quoting them in the copyright file.
>
> You should not use the copyright file as a general README file. If
> your package has such a file it should be installed in
> /usr/share/doc/package/README or README.Debian or some other
> appropriate place.

This does not work well with transitional packages that are completly
empty. The idea is that dpkg will automatically forget about the
transitional package after upgrade allowing for example to rename a
package without leaving a dummy package under the old name
installed. For this to work the transitional package may have not
files, not even /usr/share/doc/package/copyright.

I suggest policy 12.5 to be extended with the wolloing text (or
something better worded):

Only exception to this rule are empty transitional packages that
contain no files and no maintainer scripts.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.22.2-mrvn
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
This proposal requests relaxing Policy's copyright rules to allow for
completely empty packages that contain no files for use in transitions.
The contention was that such packages would then be immediately forgotten
by dpkg rather than lingering on the system.

There is no response in the bug to my request for clarification that this
is what dpkg really does.  I vaguely remember there may have been
discussion elsewhere, not copied to the bug, that established that it
doesn't work as well as one would like with such a package.  This might be
worth considering if this were a supported dpkg feature, but that needs to
be confirmed first.

In the absence of additional information, I'm rejecting this proposal.
This is a soft rejection, meaning that if someone feels strongly about
this proposal and wants to step forward to champion it again, I'd be
willing to reopen the bug.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

--- End Message ---
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