Bug#572253: debian-policy: example for usage of Replaces: when a package is split

[Uwe Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.4.0
Severity: wishlist

Hello,

I asked in #debian-mentors about the usage of Replaces: and Conflicts:
when a package is split.  Cyril suggested to provide an example in the
policy for that.

The patch below isn't tested at all, but should be human parsable to
understand the suggestion.

Best regards
Uwe

diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index 3bac1e4..358a889 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -4655,6 +4655,18 @@ Provides: bar
 	  </p>
 
 	  <p>
+	    If a package <tt>foo</tt> is split into <tt>foo</tt>
+	    and <tt>foo-data</tt> starting at version 1.2-3,
+	    <tt>foo-data</tt> should have
+
+	    <example compact="compact">
+Replaces: foo (&lt;&lt; 1.2-3)
+	    </example>
+
+	    in its control file.  The package <tt>foo<tt> doesn't need that.
+	  </p>
+
+	  <p>
 	    If a package is completely replaced in this way, so that
 	    <prgn>dpkg</prgn> does not know of any files it still
 	    contains, it is considered to have "disappeared".  It will

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers proposed-updates
  APT policy: (900, 'proposed-updates'), (900, 'stable'), (600, 'testing-proposed-updates'), (600, 'testing'), (500, 'oldstable-proposed-updates'), (500, 'oldstable'), (200, 'unstable'), (2, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-3-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

debian-policy depends on no packages.

debian-policy recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
pn  doc-base                      <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information