Bug#686143: debian-policy: FHS requirements on "essential" binaries cannot be well defined at distro level
Zachary Harris <zacharyharris@hotmail.com> writes:
> Under #652011, presumably with reference to my proposed addition to
> policy here, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>> Policy already says what you want it to say currently,
> Where? If policy is already clear on this, then this bug should be
> closed rather than wishlisted. On the other hand, if policy is not clear
> on this, then it should be made clear, and this present bug is more than
> wishlist until that is done.
No, no, what I meant was, in regard to your bug against general, Policy
already says that packages have to follow the FHS, which includes the /bin
vs. /usr/bin split.
What happened was that your previous bug to general, after sparking a
bunch of discussion about whether the /bin vs. /usr/bin split was useful,
got reassigned to debian-policy presumably to continue the discussion
about discarding the split. That wasn't your original point at all, but
that was what sparked the change in bug title. However, that isn't a
discussion that anyone is currently pursuing, and I don't think that
leaving the bug open to talk about whether we should undo that split is
helping anyone.
Your original problem, that there are packages with binaries in /bin that
use libraries in /usr/lib, is unsolved, but is also unaddressable within
Debian in the form of a bug against general. This isn't a problem with
your methodology so much as a problem with Debian, but realistically bugs
against general almost never result in any concrete action. That's why
folks like Holger try to reassign them to other packages where there's
some hope that someone will address them.
Right now, Policy says that packages have to follow the FHS, which
includes the /bin vs. /usr/bin split, and packages that have handled that
split incorrectly are buggy. That, at least in my opinion, justifies bugs
against any package that anyone uncovers that has that problem, and
personally I think maintainers should fix them (although whether with a
sufficiently high priority to warrant new uploads during release freeze is
debatable and probably depends on how complex the change is).
It was only that bug, the bug you originally filed against general, that I
closed, on the grounds that while it's a valid bug, it would need to get
split up into bugs against each package that is doing the wrong thing to
really get addressed.
Your recent wording suggestion is separate from that, and I disconnected
it and left it open against debian-policy. I've not looked at it in
detail, but I've tagged it as already having a concrete wording change
proposal, so it's marked as fairly far along in our review process to help
me notice that it's there as I do further Policy work.
Sorry that this is so confusing!
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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