Bug#994008: debian-policy: Clarify relationship between source and binary packages' archive areas

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

Hi,

On Thu, 2021-09-09 at 17:39 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> In the form of a table, the allowed source/binary combinations are:
> 
>                       |        binary           |
>                       | main  contrib  non-free |
>      -----------------|-------------------------|
>              main     |  yes    yes      -      |
>      source  contrib  |   -     yes      -      |
>              non-free |   -      -      yes     |
> 
> ftp team: is this correct?

Yes. But source packages in main must also produce at least one binary
package in main[1].

  [1]: Probably with the default build profile if we care about corner
       cases.

I personally would prefer if we would avoid using this feature too much
if possible. It is simpler to understand when archive areas are self-
contained (IMHO). Outside Debian archive areas are used differently,
e.g., for different "branches" or similar; sources building binary
packages across multiple archive areas also find strange corner cases
now and then that are not handled correctly.

Ansgar