Bug#521810: debian-policy: Document user defined fields starting with X-
Nils Rennebarth wrote:
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.0.1
Severity: wishlist
Please add something along the following lines to the section 5.7
"User defined fields" to the debian policy manual:
Usually, unknown fields are iggnored by the debian packaging system. To
avoid conflicts of user defined fields with field that may be used by
debian in the future, we suggest to use field names starting with X- (so
you need to put X[BCS]-X-foo into the control file) which are guaranteed
to never conflict with future official fields. That has the added bonus
that dpkg-deb will not issue warnings about user defined fields
at package build time.
I consider both as features.
On email, the x- fields is grown too much, and it is no more a test
before requiring a non x- header. So now you could have conflicting
x-* headers, and not advantage for standardization.
I think we don't want such behaviour on packages, and user should
avoid conflict (e.g. searching in archives, googling,...).
Eventually I could accept "non-registered" fields for tracking and
additional informations, but every field which could modify
behaviour of package manager, should be taken with great care.
Personally I would remove the "User-defined fields" title, adding
short commentary about support of X*- for forward compatibility,
or eventually removing the entire section: it is a documentation
of dpkg-deb (e.g. for special user needs), not for official
packages, which is the target of policy.
ciao
cate
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