Bug#620566: dpkg: "version number does not start with digit" is in contrast to policy
Julien Cristau <jcristau@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 05:03:47 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
>> Well, while I generally agree dpkg does not need to be as strict as
>> policy when it might make sense to be laxer outside Debian, in this
>> case I don't see the point in allowing the version to start with an
>> alphabetic character. This is an interface other software rely on, and
>> expect it to be as specified, so making sure dpkg validates and
>> disallows bogus values seems the correct thing to do.
> I don't see the point in disallowing these versions in dpkg, they won't
> cause any problem anywhere, they're just discouraged by policy... Maybe
> we want dak to forbid them, but that's a different thing.
I'm not a fan of having DAK reject things that Policy says are allowed.
The primary purpose of Policy is to document the requirements for the
Debian archive, so if the Debian archive doesn't allow something, Policy
should say that. Otherwise, it's just confusing. Out-of-archive packages
are always allowed (and sometimes expected) to ignore bits of Policy.
I think we should either allow it or not allow it, but Policy and DAK
should agree.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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