Bug#620109: Policy §3.5 (on Pre-Depends) does not reflect actual practice

[Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 03:33:25PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> 
> > The reason
> > we request peer review of Pre-Depends is that they have a cost and should
> > not be abused.
> 
> Okay.  That's not what policy §3.5 says; it does not say Pre-Depends should
> or must be peer-reviewed or that one should examine all aspects when adding
> them but simply that there should be
> 
>  (1) a discussion on debian-devel, and
>  (2) a consensus that adding this particular Pre-Depends is a good idea.

I think the policy is correct. I would favor keeping the current wording.
As you can see in the debian-devel archive, a lot of developer misunderstand
what Pre-Depends actually do and adding spurious Pre-Depends can be quite
disruptive to the upgrade path. Hence the need to refer to debian-devel for
review. On the other hand, making the requirement more stringent would be
too bureaucratic (sometimes Pre-Depends are necessary and should be used).

So I would favor closing this bug, if nobody object.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.