Bug#663918: debian-policy: forbid deprecated relations (<, >)

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:
> Le Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 12:28:10AM +0100, Jakub Wilk a écrit :

>> There are only 12 packages in the archive still using this confusing
>> syntax:
>> http://lintian.debian.org/tags/obsolete-relation-form-in-source.html

> One less (r-cran-psy).

> I see that rp-pppoe has not been uploaded for a long time.  It might be
> better to check that rebuilding will not introduce unforseen bugs,
> before making the current version unfit for a release.

I confirmed that rp-pppoe still builds, although with a lot of warnings
due to the use of these deprecated relations and a deprecated version of
debhelper, among other things.  I can't test it since I don't use PPP.

However, I'm comfortable going forward anyway for two reasons: one, we
want packages to be rebuildable and packages that aren't rebuildable are
already RC-buggy even if we haven't detected that problem; and two, making
it a Policy must does not automatically make it RC.  That's still at the
discretion of the release managers, and I suspect they'd be willing to
give packages a pass for something relatively minor like this.

So, I'm seconding the original change and, that making three seconds
counting the proposer, applying the following change for the next release,
which also rewords the section minorly for clarity.

diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
index 4fd60d9..52dbb26 100644
--- a/policy.sgml
+++ b/policy.sgml
@@ -4607,13 +4607,13 @@ fi
 
 	<p>
 	  The relations allowed are <tt>&lt;&lt;</tt>, <tt>&lt;=</tt>,
-	  <tt>=</tt>, <tt>&gt;=</tt> and <tt>&gt;&gt;</tt> for
-	  strictly earlier, earlier or equal, exactly equal, later or
-	  equal and strictly later, respectively.  The deprecated
-	  forms <tt>&lt;</tt> and <tt>&gt;</tt> were used to mean
-	  earlier/later or equal, rather than strictly earlier/later,
-	  so they should not appear in new packages (though
-	  <prgn>dpkg</prgn> still supports them).
+	  <tt>=</tt>, <tt>&gt;=</tt> and <tt>&gt;&gt;</tt> for strictly
+	  earlier, earlier or equal, exactly equal, later or equal and
+	  strictly later, respectively.  The deprecated
+	  forms <tt>&lt;</tt> and <tt>&gt;</tt> were confusingly used to
+	  mean earlier/later or equal, rather than strictly earlier/later,
+	  and must not appear in new packages (though <prgn>dpkg</prgn>
+	  still supports them with a warning).
 	</p>
 
 	<p>

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