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Bug#491055: marked as done (allow debian/copyright to be compressed)

Your message dated Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:44:51 -0700
with message-id <87o9rlx51o.fsf@iris.silentflame.com>
and subject line Closing inactive Policy bugs
has caused the Debian Bug report #491055,
regarding allow debian/copyright to be compressed
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
491055: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=491055
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.0.1
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

In Debian Policy section 12.5 "Copyright information", it can be read that 
debian/copyright may not be compressed:

"Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright and 
distribution license in the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright. This file 
must neither be compressed nor be a symbolic link."

I propose to change it to:

"Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright and 
distribution license in the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright (may be 
compressed with gzip -9). This file must not be a symbolic link."

Policy encourages all other documentation files to be installed compressed. 
I've done some searching for the reasons for this exception but couldn't find 
any. Thinking a bit about it, one reason I can think of is to make it more 
accessible. But in order to get the file installed in the first place, one 
needs a host of tools including a gzip decompressor (via dpkg). I therefore 
think that if you can get the file installed, you'll also be able to read it.

Compressing all copyright files on my 'standard' system yields a 8 MB space 
saving. Not an extreme amount on a normal system (but why waste it?), but 
this may be even more significant in a minimal chroot installation.

What prompted me to file this request though, is bug #448615 where Neil 
Williams requests compressed copyright files explicitly for embedded use. I 
couldn't find a reason why that would be acceptable for embedded systems but 
not for regular systems - so I hope it can be changed "upstream" instead of 
specifically for emdebian, so that everyone benefits from it and no 
exceptions need to be made.


Thijs

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--- Begin Message --- 
control: user debian-policy@packages.debian.org
control: usertag -1 +obsolete
control: tag -1 +wontfix

Russ Allbery and I did a round of in-person bug triage at DebConf17 and
we are closing this bug as inactive.

The reasons for closing fall into the following categories, from most
frequent to least frequent:

- issue is appropriate for Policy, there is a consensus on how to fix
  the problem, but preparing the patch is very time-consuming and no-one
  has volunteered to do it, and we do not judge the issue to be
  important enough to keep an open bug around;

- issue is appropriate for Policy but there does not yet exist a
  consensus on what should change, and no recent discussion.  A fresh
  discussion might allow us to reach consensus, and the messages in the
  old bug are unlikely to help very much; or

- issue is not appropriate for Policy.

If you feel this bug is still relevant and want to restart the
discussion, you can re-open the bug.  However, please consider instead
opening a new bug with a message that summarises and condenses the
previous discussion, updates the report for the current state of Debian,
and makes clear exactly what you think should change.

A lot of these old bugs have long side tangents and numerous messages,
and that old discussion is not necessarily helpful for figuring out what
Debian Policy should say today.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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