Bug#459427: Patch seeking seconds on changelog vs. NEWS handling

[Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 07:50:59AM +0800, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello Bill,
> 
> On Sun 22 Jul 2018 at 07:45PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> 
> > I have to disagree with that recommendation. It all depends on how the
> > changelog is worded. Since we do not include a definition of changelog
> > and NEWS file, we cannot assume that one of them is useless without the
> > source code.
> >
> > For example pari-gp include both changelog.gz and NEW.gz and both are
> > potentially useful to users without a copy of the source.
> 
> I think we can rely on maintainer discretion to ignore Policy in cases
> like this.  Recommendations are weaker than "should" claims.

The issue is that the recommendation does not include a rationale, and
it seems to me the rationale is based on an implicit definition of
changelog which is not communicated either (or more precisely, it is
based on the undocumented assumption that if a package includes both a
changelog and a NEWS, the changelog is a source-level one, which is not
always the case).

So the maintainer has no basis to decide whether to ignore the recommendation.

So I would suggest policy to define precisely the kind of sourcelevel changelog
that is not useful to the binary package user and recommend not to
include them, with a rationale. 

It is always better for policy to state its goal explicitely.

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

Imagine a large red swirl here.