Bug#849851: [debian-policy] Document that rules clean target is not sufficient for removing dfsg problems
Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:
> I don't think that it should be a point of Policy that the rules clean
> target is not to be used for this purpose, because it is entailed by the
> ftp-master's interpretation of DFSG plus this sentence that we already
> have in Policy:
> Every [source or binary] package in main must comply with the DFSG
> (Debian Free Software Guidelines).
Well, if it's a common-enough error, I think there's no problem with also
mentioning this in the section on the clean rule. It's not likely that
this interpretation is going to change.
> However, as you say, we should document this to prevent others from
> tripping over it. As you suggest, such a note would need to refer to
> repacking the tarball. The Developer's Reference already contains a
> discussion of repacking upstream tarballs, so perhaps this should go
> there?
+1 on putting any detailed instructions in the Developer's Reference
rather than in Policy, unless someone wants to tackle documenting upstream
source repackaging and the upstream version number convention in Policy
directly (which isn't the worst idea, but probably isn't hugely urgent).
> Or we could use a footnote to Policy. I attach a patch doing that.
I'm on a war against footnotes in Policy because I think they make it much
harder to read (particularly in text form, particularly with DocBook which
now moves all the footnotes to the end of the chapter). I'd love to move
them all to either inline text or sidebars of some kind, although that's
going to be a long effort.
> diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml
> index 782bd88..303688b 100644
> --- a/policy.xml
> +++ b/policy.xml
> @@ -2170,6 +2170,16 @@
> <literal>build</literal> has been invoked as root (since
> <literal>build</literal> may create directories, for
> example).
> + <footnote>
> + <para>
> + The clean target should not be used to remove files
> + in the source tree that are not compatible with the
> + DFSG. This is because the files would remain in the
> + upstream tarball, and thus in the source package, so
> + the source package would continue to violate DFSG.
> + Instead, the upstream source should be repacked.
> + </para>
> + </footnote>
> </para>
> </listitem>
> </varlistentry>
s/should not/cannot/ (to get away from using standards language here and
because this isn't a Policy statement so much as a statement of
capability), and I would say "repacked to remove those files" in the last
sentence, but otherwise this looks good to me and could just be included
directly in that section on clean, I think.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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