Bug#681289: debian-policy: Changelog and copyright should be package metadata

[Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at>]

   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.

> All the tools and services that currently extract both of those files
> (packages.d.o, apt-listhanges, etc.) would benefit from being able to
> extract them with the rest of the package metadata.

 No, please don't use packages.d.o as a reasoning without having talked
to the packages.d.o maintainers.  This is also the reason why I tend to
close your bugreport against packages.d.o because the plan is to not
extract them anymore.  ftpmasters/dak are extracting them already and
providing them to us, so the packages.d.o site will *not* extract this
information in the future.

 And without any more than that statement I'm not really buying that it
really would be a benefit?

> Additionnaly it also solves a problem that we have with multi-arch same
> packages and bin-nmu. Such a bin-nmu means that the changelog on the
> bin-nmued architecture will be different from the other arches and the
> package is thus no longer co-installable.

 That might be the real issue, please don't push other reasonings to
front without contacting the people involved there whether this is
really the case.

> 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?

> 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?

 Is there any other solution that would help the multiarch issue
instead?

 Did I miss a thread on debian-devel about this?

 Last thing: policy is about document current practises, not about
future possibilities.  Doesn't this bugreport come a bit early?

 Thanks,
Rhonda
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