Bug#514919: Removing support for uploads to multiple distributions
Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> writes:
> It depends, and there can be some repetition when needed to ease the
> comprehension. But you don't need to know the .changes syntax to create
> policy conformant packages, you just have to know how to call
> dpgk-genchanges and what to put in debian/files and debian/changelog and
> debian/control.
I think this would be an unfortunate direction to take.
The ideal to strive for, in my opinion, is that one should be able to
build a Policy-conformant Debian package using only information in Policy
and standard UNIX tools. That you cannot currently do this I consider a
bug in Policy that I want to fix. It's not horribly high-priority
compared to other bugs, but I certainly don't agree with going the
opposite direction.
Even apart from the merits of having an independent specification and the
stronger review process that Policy offers, there are practical benefits
to having all the details in one place. Policy is intended to be a
technical specification, not a how-to guide for packagers. We shouldn't
be afraid of including the specific details even if there are standard
tools that can take care of them for you.
As we've discussed in the past on the dpkg mailing list, I'm personally
unhappy at some recent moves towards changing how Debian packages are
built within the dpkg tools without going through the Policy review
process, and I think this sort of documentation shift would accelerate
that trend.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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