On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 08:46:47AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > I wonder if something like > > Vcs-Git: git://git.eyrie.org/kerberos/webauth.git squeeze > > could be made to work. > My understanding was that the debcheckout developers were not enthused > about adding a syntax that Git upstream didn't support, but I think that's > the only solution that anyone's come up with so far. > On the other hand, it is kind of silly for them to be in such widespread > use without Policy saying anything about them. Maybe we should just > document them as they are and be explicit about the limitations, saying > things like: > The information in the Vcs-* header should be sufficient to locate the > repository used for packaging and access it anonymously. It may or > may not be the branch used for packaging any specific version of the > package, and the packaging is not necessarily on the default branch. > Additional investigation is often required to find the part of the > repository used for current development or for any particular version > of the package. > If, over time, debcheckout and our package metadata starts making more > explicit guarantees, we can always tighten the language later, but the > above reflects the current state of the archive. I object to policy specifying any Vcs-* fields in a way that does not uniquely identify a Debian packaging branch. Running debcheckout for a package only to then have to guess at random which of 20 branches is the one containing the packaging I care about[1] is nonsense, and I don't think this has any business being in policy in the absence of sensible semantics. The field should in all cases point to the right branch, not just the right repository, and in the absence of an acceptable per-branch URI syntax, it ought not be standardized at all. Now, given that git seems to be the only widespread VCS with theis problem, I wouldn't object to codifying Vcs- fields for the others in the meantime; but some people might find it equally unpalatable to specify fields for everything except git. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org [1] E.g., Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/~lamont/util-linux.git
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