Re: [DEP-5] [patch] Syntax of the files.

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>]

On la, 2010-08-14 at 21:39 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> This raises something else I was thinking about.  I believe that technical
> DEPs, if adopted, should move into the debian-policy package for further
> maintenance.

I agree with this, with both my DEP-5 and DEP-0 hats on. (It's cold in
Wellington, so two hats is appropriate.)

> > 2) The Policy does not describe the DEP syntax for escaping empty lines.
> 
> > Policy §5.1 does not describe the mechanism of using a space plus a dot
> > to escape empty lines in field values, but we can not refer simply to
> > §5.6.13 (Description) because the DEP-5 License field is verbatim,
> > whereas the debian/control Description filed requires an additional
> > space to signal verbatim sections.
> 
> Yes, this should be described in DEP-5.

I propose, in the description of the License field:

        * Remaining lines: Each non-empty line of the license text
        should be prefixed by a single space or TAB character. Empty
        lines should be replaced with a line consisting of a space or
        TAB followed by a period. (Empty lines lines contain nothing, or
        only whitespace
        characters.) If a debian/copyright file is formatted for
        display, the license text is not expected to be word-wrapped,
        but displayed as if it were program code, so that license text
        that uses one of the many conventions for plain text formatting
        will display OK.