Bug#681289: debian-policy: Changelog and copyright should be package metadata
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> * Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> [2012-07-12 08:46:03 CEST]:
> > Both the changelog and the copyright files are stored with a package's
> > normal data (within data.tar in the .deb) but they are really package
> > metadata (that should be part of control.tar in the .deb).
>
> Are they? I consider them documentation and expect them be next to the
> documentation.
Documentation can be meta-data. It's the fact that those documentation are
produced by Debian that qualifies them as meta-data (control.tar) and
not upstream data (data.tar).
> And without any more than that statement I'm not really buying that it
> really would be a benefit?
The benefit I was referring too is purely in terms of performance.
Extracting control.tar.gz is faster than extracting data.tar.gz because of
its smaller size (at least in most non-trivial packages).
> > 2/ that programs that want to retrieve the changelog and/or copyright file
> > of an installed package should try to use "dpkg-query --control-show <pkg>
> > <changelog|copyrigh>" and fall back to the usual path if that fails.
> >
> > Those interfaces are available in wheezy's dpkg (>= 1.16.5).
>
> So that would force services to upgrade to wheezy as soon as the first
> such package lands in unstable, right?
It depends. What services are you thinking of? I expecte that programs
trying to access changelog/copyright of installed packages are mostly
end-user programs (so the "services" qualification seems weird).
> > 3/ that programs that want to retrieve the changelog and/or copyright file
> > of a .deb file should use dpkg-deb -I <file> <changelog|copyrigh>" (or
> > look for the changelog/copyright file in the directory extracted
> > with dpkg-deb -e <file>)
>
> "that programs" are also end-users, not? Users expect the copyright
> and changelog information to be readily available to them. How do you
> address their expectations? Will they be in
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/package.{changelog,copyright}, so a symlink could
> help with that?
With the current implementation of dpkg, they will be there, yes.
But for end-users, I rather expect that we're going to create
"dpkg --changelog <pkg>" that does the right thing for them (and same for
--copyright).
> Last thing: policy is about document current practises, not about
> future possibilities. Doesn't this bugreport come a bit early?
Some changes just can't be implemented without global coordination and
buy-in. The policy (and its associated process) is a way to ensure both.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
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