Bug#538665: debian-policy: "Info documents" section is outdated
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, Bill Allombert wrote:
> 1) As written, the policy change induce maintainers to make changes to their
> packages that will cause them to have a bug. This is not acceptable.
>
> 2) As discussed previously, there are ways to tweak the process to
> avoid this bug while keeping the advantage of this change, and so it should
> be done.
No, it's not true. Quoting debhelper's changelog:
* dh_installinfo: No longer inserts install-info calls into
maintainer scripts, as that is now triggerized. Adds a dependency
via misc:Depends to handle partial upgrades.
So package have the required dependency and partial upgrades are correctly
supported. And we should not enshrine in policy such transition details,
we only describe the currently wanted behaviour.
> 3) Debian policy is not dpkg or any other package documentation. The mere
> fact a package change its interface is not ground to update policy without
> following the policy process (I am not claiming it ever happened).
What are we doing here if not following the process? (In other words this
remark is useless)
> 4) While I have no technical objection to the 'START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY' /
> 'END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY' bits, currently at least one program generating info files
> (debiandoc2info) does not follow them. Packages using it to generate their info
> files would have a bug under this policy without an easy way to fix it, so
> maybe it is a bit premature.
You should consider switching away from debiandoc anyway (much like policy
wants to move away from it).
> 5) I am sorry to have to resort to a formal objection for issues which are, in
> the big picture, small. However if less formal objections are ignored, let it
> be that way.
They have not been ignored.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
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