Re: What’s the use for Standards-Version?
Josselin Mouette wrote:
Le mercredi 12 août 2009 à 08:16 -0500, Manoj Srivastava a écrit :
AIUI, this header is here to indicate which version of the policy the
package is supposed to conform to. This way, we have a way to enforce
which policy versions are supported, e.g. in a stable release, by
forbidding the too old versions.
No, that is wrong. The reason we put in the Standards version is
to let the next developer know what to look for in the upgrading
checklist in policy in order to bring the package up to date with policy
This assumes that the previous developer has correctly updated the
package according to the stated Standards version. Which is, in the
general case, wrong.
8-/
Why will developers update standard version, if they don't update the
package? As shown by codehelp, a lot of package declare old policies.
If this is the common case, we have a real problem on developer side.
This also assumes that the upgrading checklist contains all relevant
information, which is also wrong for real cases.
If you want to bring a random package up-to-date with the policy, it is
generally more useful to look at its RC bugs, and also at its other
bugs.
Bugs happens, so standard version doesn't mean "no RC bugs according
polixy x.y.z". But we must correct packages before user will file a
RC bug. And I think few policy-induced RC bugs are discovered.
Said otherwise, with the current state of our practice, the workflow you
describe is flawed. Which makes the standards version declaration
useless.
But also your proposal: Maintainers are not able to check policy,
so we must rely on other people checking the policy and filling
the bugs? Who are such RC reporter?
hmmm.
ciao
cate
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