Re: Bug#190753: About dropping the ‘should’ recommendation to rename binary programs using a suffix to indicate their programming language.

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, 06 Oct 2009, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > […] the core of my argument is that renaming before the patches are
> > accepted is a deviation that wastes the time of our users (in that
> > case, me).
>
> Sure, but I'd expect that in most cases, a simple patch to upstream,
> with a resultant ack for the next distribution should take a few days
> at most. If there's a total rejection, then it's a bug, but it's most
> likely wontfix.
>
> In the cases where upstream is unresponsive that it takes more than a
> few days to do the go-around, it probably shouldn't be being packaged
> in the first place. [Or at least, it shouldn't be uploaded until the
> upstream gets back to you.]

This, to my view, points to a good reason to keep this recommendation in
Policy: that packages aren't yet suitable for inclusion in Debian until
the rename is accepted upstream.

That there are clearly many packages that violate this, and that fixing
the bug is often disruptive until it's completed, is a good argument for
keeping the recommendation a “should” (not a “must”), but not for
relaxing it fursther in my view.

-- 
 \     “There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority |
  `\           assailed by truth.” —John Kenneth Galbraith, 1989-07-28 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney