Bug#593909: debian-policy: Clarifications about the syntax of Debian control files.

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

>> In that case, yes, we should say that the order of paragraphs is
>> significant, since indeed it always has been. Probably just by adding
>> the sentence "The order of paragraphs in the control file is
>> significant" to the end of the first paragraph.

> The source package stanza must come first, I can see why that's
> significant. But why does the order of binary package stanzas matter?

debhelper(7):

       Note that if a package is the first (or only) binary package listed
       in debian/control, debhelper will use debian/foo if no
       debian/package.foo file can be found.

Also, dh_listpackages returns them in control-file order and some source
packages do rely on this.  CDBS-based packages, last time I touched CDBS,
required listing shared library packages before binary packages that used
them in order for dh_shlibdeps to produce the correct results due to how
the packages were constructed (otherwise, dh_makeshlibs for the shared
library package wouldn't have run before dh_shlibdeps for the binary
package).  I've seen other examples.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>