Bug#587279: Clarify restrictions on main to non-free dependencies
Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, 25 Jun 2017 at 14:43:36 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Here is an updated version of the patch from earlier in this (now very
>> long) thread for discussion. I still think this is consistent with
>> previous practice and reasonable documentation of what we're currently
>> doing.
>> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
>> index 7ba5fc0..daf4c3c 100644
>> --- a/policy.xml
>> +++ b/policy.xml
>> @@ -595,7 +595,9 @@
>> <literal>Build-Depends</literal>,
>> <literal>Build-Depends-Indep</literal>, or
>> <literal>Build-Depends-Arch</literal> relationship on a
>> - non-<emphasis>main</emphasis> package),
>> + non-<emphasis>main</emphasis> package) unless that package
>> + is only listed as a non-default alternative for a package in
>> + <emphasis>main</emphasis>,
>> </para>
>> </listitem>
>> <listitem>
>> If we still can't reach consensus on this, we should probably bump it
>> to the Technical Committee for resolution so that this doesn't just sit
>> around unresolved forever. (I feel like that happened at some point in
>> the past, but it's been so long that my memory is very hazy.)
> A TC resolution in 2014 said that
> "Depends: package-in-main | package-in-non-free" is acceptable for main,
> and not a Policy §2.2.1 violation. What you're doing here is editing
> Policy §2.2.1 to make the 2014 TC's interpretation more obviously the
> correct one.
Ah, thank you! I did remember correctly that the Technical Committee took
this up.
> This is certainly not unanimous (the TC vote in 2014 wasn't unanimous
> either); but I think there's rough consensus, it matches current
> practice, and it's better for Policy to be clear and specific as a
> self-contained document, rather than leaving ambiguity in place and
> requiring past TC decisions to be consulted for disambiguation. So I
> second this patch.
Thanks! Yeah, given that it was a TC decision, we definitely should
document it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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