Bug#610083: Remove requirement to document upstream source location in debian/copyright ?
Le Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 03:01:08PM +0100, Thijs Kinkhorst a écrit :
> On Sun, January 16, 2011 10:39, Charles Plessy wrote:
> >
> > In a recent discussion about DEP-5, it was noted that often the Homepage
> > field
> > is redundant with the information in debian/copyright:
> >
> > http://lists.debian.org/20110113213843.GB11512@gnu.kitenet.net
> >
> > The goal of the patch that I attached here is to give the possiblity for
> > the maintainers to factorise information if they wish.
>
> I'm afraid I do not understand what you mean with that they can "factorise
> information". I only know factorising as a mathematical operation. What
> will they do exactly? But more importantly, and pertaining to my original
> question: what problem would that solve that we have now?
I would not call this a problem. This part of the Policy can stay as it is for
20 years, and Debian's quality will not decrease. This is why I filed the bug
with a wishlist severity. However:
The Homepage field is becoming a primary source of information for going to the
download page, because it is parsed and its contents are displayed by
downstream information providers, like apt-cache and packages.debian.org. In a
large number of cases, the URL provided in debian/copyright content is
identical, or one obvious click far from the link in the Homepage field. I only
look at debian/copyright if Homepage did not give me satisfaction.
The difference between both sources of information is that Homepage is
parseable, and debian/copyright is not. DEP-5 will not solve this problem: the
Source field is more or less free-form. It may contain an URL, but not
necessarly, and if there is an URL it is not guaranteed to be the one to the
sources.
When the information is redundant, I would like the Policy to permit it to be
in a single place. This will give a bit of flexibility to allow for evolutions.
I think that the requirement to have the download URL in the debian/copyright
file is one of the reasons why there is temptation to add other meta-data to
it, and I think that it is not the place for this. Let's remember one of the
last sentences of §12.5: ‘You should not use the copyright file as a general
README file’.
Cheers,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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