Upcoming Policy plans
This is an attempt to be bold. We'll see if it actually survives contact
with reality. :)
We have a variety of things that we've talked about for some time, but
which aren't going to happen unless we make a concerted effort to make
them happen. I'm going to try setting up a schedule and a framework and
see if that helps.
First, I plan on releasing 3.9.3.1 next week with only informative
changes. I want to update the wording of the copyright format
specification following subsequent discussion, and there are also a
variety of informative bugs that have accumulated in the BTS. Please
don't merge normative changes until after that release.
Next, there are three major areas where I think Policy is obviously
deficient and on which I want to focus effort. This doesn't rule out
merging other things, of course, but I want to make sure these get done.
They are symbols files, triggers, and multiarch.
I've already written a draft for symbols files, which I will revise and
then hope to merge shortly after 3.9.3.1. I will probably start working
on drafting a multiarch policy next, since it's becoming rather important
and we've lived without a trigger policy for longer. Then I'll try to
work on the trigger documentation. Of course, if anyone beats me to it,
I'm certainly happy to have someone else do the work!
My goal is to have all of those merged by the end of April. I also want
to resolve (either by merging or by abandoning) all of the outstanding
branches that we have in the archive by the end of April.
Then, my plan is to declare a Policy freeze on May 1st. Hopefully by that
point we'll be into release freeze as well. I then want to take the next
month (or less if it gets done faster) and convert Policy to DocBook.
I would prefer not to just do a mechanical conversion, and instead take
the opportunity to do some substantial cleanup. If we're going to change
everything and probably break the anchors for external links, we may as
well do as much other cleanup as we can get done at the same time. It's
been a long time since Policy has been edited as a coherent document, and
it shows. It may be that I'll run out of time or energy and we'll make do
with a more mechanical conversion, but that's the hope.
I've opened bug #661417 to track any additional cleanups that we want to
do at the same time. Simple things that don't require discussion can be
added directly to that bug. For more complex things that may require some
discussion, please open a separate bug and mark it as blocking that bug.
What does everyone think about this plan?
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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