Bug#971977: debian-policy: debian/changelog date syntax description inconsistent/ambiguous wrt. to day of month
On Sun, 2020-10-11 at 00:36:00 +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 4.5.0.3
> Severity: minor
> Triggered by writing https://bugs.debian.org/971975 against lintian
> (which actually was triggered by writing another bug report, #971974
> :-), I noticed that in
>
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#debian-changelog-debian-changelog
>
> the description of the date format is inconsistent or at least ambiguous
> with regards to how many digits a day of the month can have and if there
> should be a zero or a space or nothing prepended to single-digit day of
> months.
>
> Especially this item made me rise an eyebrow:
>
> > * dd is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31)
>
> Now what? Are one-digit day of months allowed or must we use "01" to
> "09" for single-digit day of months? And the commonly used leading space
> for one-digit days of months are not mentioned anywhere.
>
> At least the "01-31" in parentheses clashes with "one-[…]digit day of
> month" in the beginning of the item. (Or does "one-digit" refer to that
> the number of the day of the months can be (obviously) one digit, but
> does not refer to how it's actually written? If so, this should be
> clarified.)
Right. I've clarified this now locally for deb-changelog(5) as follows:
,---
--- i/man/deb-changelog.pod
+++ w/man/deb-changelog.pod
@@ -127,7 +127,8 @@ B<Mon>, B<Tue>, B<Wed>, B<Thu>, B<Fri>, B<Sat>, B<Sun>.
=item I<dd>
-Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (B<01>-B<31>).
+Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (B<01>-B<31>), where the heading
+zero is optional, but conventionally does not get omitted.
=item I<month>
@@ -168,6 +169,9 @@ The “trailer” line with the maintainer and date details must be
preceded by exactly one space (U+0020 B<SPACE>).
The maintainer details and the date must be separated by exactly two
spaces (U+0020 B<SPACE>).
+Each part of the I<date> can be separated by one or more spaces
+(U+0020 B<SPACE>), except after the comma where it can be separated
+by zero or more spaces (U+0020 B<SPACE>).
Any line that consists entirely (i.e., no leading whitespace) of B<#>
or B</* */> style comments or RCS keywords.
`---
Thanks,
Guillem
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