Bug#494472: closed by Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@golden-gryphon.com> (Debian polisy is not a HOWTO document)

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Harald Dunkel <harald.dunkel@t-online.de> writes:

> Sorry, I did not have such a deep insight into the procedures how the
> Debian policies are maintained. Filing an ER against Debian Policy
> seemed the right way to me. If the Debian Policy Team doesn't feel
> responsible, or if it does not have the resources to write such a
> document, then this ER could have been reassigned.
>
> But waiting for several months without a single response and then simply
> closing it is very rude.

Waiting for several months is a lack of resources, I'm afraid.  If that
causes the subsequent response to be perceived as rude, I'm afraid that
we're doomed to be rude, at least until significant additional resources
appear.  Closing it without an explanation would be rude, but closing it
with an explanation is fairly standard and is how we try to keep ahead of
a large bug backlog.

I'm a little hesitant to reopen it and reassign it on a couple of grounds:

* Manoj is the maintainer of kernel-package, and I'd want some sign from
  him that he felt like kernel-package was the best place to track this
  before reassigning it there (since he could have reassigned it instead
  of closing it if he felt that was correct).  I don't know the details of
  who decided the interface for building out-of-source kernel modules;
  it's possible that it's actually a debian-kernel issue.

* Assigning it to module-assistant might help, but module-assistant hasn't
  had a new release in more than a year, which means that the maintainer
  probably is in significant need of help.  There's already a bug open
  against module-assistant for its lack of detailed documentation, and to
  some extent this is a duplicate (or at least that would need to be
  resolved first).

The fundamental problem here is not that people haven't thought of such a
document or don't think it would be necessary, but rather that no one has
had time to write it.  If someone did so, I'm sure that we'd be able to
find somewhere to ship it.

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