--- Begin Message ---
- To: submit@bugs.debian.org
- Subject: [PROPOSAL] Policy interpretation and exceptions
- From: Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 22:49:48 +1000
- Message-id: <20010625224948.B28297@azure.humbug.org.au>
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.5.0
Severity: wishlist
I think we should emphasise compliance with the spirit of policy, in the
cases where that might conflict with the letter. I think there's general
agreement about this, but I'm not really sure.
So, for your perusal, here's a possible addition to policy's scope section:
--- policy.sgml Fri Jun 1 19:40:16 2001
+++ policy.sgml.discretion Mon Jun 25 22:47:48 2001
@@ -157,6 +157,21 @@
merely informative, and are not part of Debian policy itself.
</p>
+ <p>
+ The guidelines in this manual are expected to be interpreted
+ intelligently, with a view to improving the technical quality
+ of the Debian distribution. Where a guideline in this manual
+ does not make sense for a particular package, or describes
+ an inadequate solution, the maintainer should discuss the
+ issue with other developers via the <tt>debian-devel</tt>
+ or <tt>debian-policy</tt> mailing lists, with a view to
+ finding a better solution, or correcting a flaw in policy.
+ In rare cases a package may be enough of a special case that
+ it should not follow a guideline and the exception would just
+ be confusing if listed in this manual itself. In those cases,
+ a comment to this effect should generally be included in the
+ package's <tt>README.Debian</tt> file.
+ </p>
<p>
In this manual, the words <em>must</em>, <em>should</em> and
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
This proposal would add to the scope section of the Policy document a
paragraph saying that when Policy doesn't make sense, it should be
discussed on -devel and -policy, and that if packages need to make an
exception for some reason that shouldn't be mentioned in Policy, they
should note this in README.Debian.
The proposal was discussed for a while in 2001 and then died and there's
been no further discussion in the past seven years. During the original
discussion, there were several questions about which sorts of exceptions
would be documented in README.Debian and why we wouldn't modify Policy in
those cases instead, but not a lot of progress on producing consensus
wording.
I'm rejecting this proposal due to lack of consensus and because I don't
think the problem it was meant to address warrants a change in Policy.
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 ---