Re: [DEP5] Clarification of the minimum required structure

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:

> Currently the DEP5 draft includes the following text:

>   The Copyright and License fields in the header paragraph may complement
>   but do not replace the files paragraphs.

> This implies, but does not state explicitly, that there must be at least one
> Files paragraph in the file to be compliant.  I would like to see this
> corrected by making it explicit in the section on File syntax what the
> minimum required structure is; but it's possible others have a different
> understanding of this text.

> Is the attached patch ok to commit?

During the discussion of allowing Copyright and License fields in the
header paragraph, one of the things that was raised is the possibility of
using the DEP-5 format with *just* a header paragraph as a structured way
of representing the level of detail found in a lot of old-school
debian/copyright files.  It would let people convert the copyright files
that just say "here's the copyright and license for upstream" to DEP-5
without implying that they've actually reviewed each file and confirmed
they are all covered under that license (and not, say, some compatible
one).

Now, this is a really nit-picky and strange edge case, and I don't really
mind if we decide that it's not important and rule it out.  There isn't
that much difference between what I describe above and just using a Files:
* stanza, and the distinction is probably too particular to be worth
explaining.

But we should probably decide explicitly if that's something we want to
rule out.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>