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Bug#549910: marked as done (debian-policy: Specify requirement in terms of upgradeability, interface stability)

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 #549910,
regarding debian-policy: Specify requirement in terms of upgradeability, interface stability
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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-- 
549910: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=549910
Debian Bug Tracking System
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--- Begin Message --- 
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: wishlist

We have some unwritten packaging rules and it would be good to write them
down even if some of them appear to be obvious to most of us. I think in
particular to stuff like:

- a package must at least be upgradable from one stable release to the next:
  - transitional packages are required when the software is renamed
  - {pre,post}{inst,rm} snippets dealing with upgrade issues must be kept
    for at least one release (but it's better to keep them for 2-3
    releases)

- a package must provide some interface stability (names of programs,
  ABI/API of libraries, location of data files, etc.) when other packages
  depend on it. In that case,  any change must be coordinated and
  appropriate dependencies must be added. It should give examples of
  Breaks:, bumped Depends when an change is made in a non-backwards
  compatible way, temporary compatibility symlinks, etc.

We have enough cases like this that it would be good to be able to point
to a policy chapter dealing with such requiremnts when we file bug
reports. Also it's important information that newbie packagers should be
able to learn somewhere, and I think policy is the most appropriate
place. It's not only best-practice, it's a must have.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (150, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

debian-policy depends on no packages.

debian-policy recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii  doc-base                      0.9.4      utilities to manage online documen

-- no debconf information

--- End Message ---
--- 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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