Bug#498300: specify that architecture-specific dependencies must have a non-empty list of architectures
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.0.1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
Section 7.1 of the policy includes a description of
architecture-specific dependencies, correctly adding the following
constraint:
> It is not permitted for some names to be prepended with exclamation
> marks while others aren't.
the reason being that the semantics of the architecture list is either
exclusive (if all archs are negated with '!') or inclusive (if all archs
are not negated).
A direct consequence is that an empty list of architecture
(e.g. 'foo []') is meaningless as it cannot be determined whether it was
meant to be inclusive or exclusive.
Still, the policy does not say explicitly that the list should be
non-empty, and in fact there are cases of (buggy) packages specifying
empty architecture lists in arch-specific dependencies.
Can you please add "non empty" just before mentioning the architecture
list? Patch implementing that is attached.
Cheers.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=it_IT.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=it_IT.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.8.16 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
--- policy.sgml.orig 2008-09-08 22:26:32.082469785 +0200
+++ policy.sgml 2008-09-08 22:27:09.006437017 +0200
@@ -4144,7 +4144,7 @@
may be restricted to a certain set of architectures. This
is indicated in brackets after each individual package name and
the optional version specification. The brackets enclose a
- list of Debian architecture names separated by whitespace.
+ non-empty list of Debian architecture names separated by whitespace.
Exclamation marks may be prepended to each of the names.
(It is not permitted for some names to be prepended with
exclamation marks while others aren't.) If the current Debian
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