Bug#587279: debian-policy: section 2.2.1 needs some tweaking
Raphael Geissert <geissert@debian.org> writes:
> I see a couple of issues with the current section 2.2.1 "The main
> archive area:"
> a) It does not list neither Pre-Depends nor Build-depends-indep.
> b) It does not take into consideration ORed dependencies.
> Point a) can be fixed by listing those two fields and maybe even toning
> down the statement in parenthesis (e.g. s/thus/e.g./.)
I think we should keep the parenthetical strong since it's currently the
only place that we say that Recommends from main to non-free is not
allowed, which is otherwise not obvious.
> The problematic mentioned in b) is that with the current wording one
> could say that the following is not allowed for a package in main:
> Depends: package-in-main | package-in-non-free
> Real example:
> Depends: unrar-free | rar
> (unrar-free is in mai, rar is in non-free.)
I'm committing the following change for the next release which differs
slightly from Raphael's in that it uses better markup for the field names
(fixing an existing minor inconsistency) and doesn't specify the first
alternative. Packages listing the non-free alternative first are probably
buggy in other ways, and if someone wants to propose wording elsewhere to
deal with that I'd probably second it, but they don't fail this particular
section because they don't require a non-free package to work.
I think this is informative, not normative, since it just clarifies the
existing requirement and doesn't change the basic requirements, so I'm
going ahead and committing this, but if anyone thinks that's too
aggressive, do speak up.
diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index 3e99099..9fe7158 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -476,9 +476,11 @@
<item>
must not require a package outside of <em>main</em>
for compilation or execution (thus, the package must
- not declare a "Depends", "Recommends", or
- "Build-Depends" relationship on a non-<em>main</em>
- package),
+ not declare a <tt>Pre-Depends</tt>, <tt>Depends</tt>,
+ <tt>Recommends</tt>, <tt>Build-Depends</tt>,
+ or <tt>Build-Depends-Indep</tt> relationship on a
+ non-<em>main</em> package unless a package
+ in <em>main</em> is listed as an alternative),
</item>
<item>
must not be so buggy that we refuse to support them,
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: