Re: dpkg-repack warnings: what effect?
(Matthias drew my attention to this thread. Sorry I'm a bit late ...)
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> wrote:
> Matthias Klose wrote:
> > I haven't yet seen any reasoning why people are seeing that
> > information as "cluttering the database" or just as "ugly".
>
> Causing unrelated programs like dpkg-repack to spew warning messages is,
> by definition, ugly.
>
> Using X- fields, which are intended for nonstandard extensions, in the
> core of Debian is also ugly.
The reason the X*- fields have to be named like that in the package
control file is that dpkg-source et al don't know which output control
files to copy them into.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using X*- fields
in a Debian-mandated way. The alternative would be to make the whole
new mechanism depend on updated dpkg-source which seems pointless
given that dpkg-source has an extension mechanism here for precisely
this purpose.
It would be nice if dpkg-source (and dpkg-deb) could be taught not to
warn about this field. But the warning is harmless too: it's there to
point out if you accidentally misspelling a field name. So ignoring
the warning is fine.
> Modify dpkg to properly add new fields if they're going to have common
> usage in Debian. Using X- fields is fine for prototyping but not for
> final implementations.
I disagree. One of the things the IETF discovered was that renaming
fields (or things in other namespaces) causes a lot of trouble and is
to be avoided. So in general new IETF standards don't expect you to
use x-* for new standards-track activities. Existing X-* fields have
in some cases been grandfathered.
We have to use X- for these fields for the reasons I've explained
above. So I think we should be prepared to officially bless these
particular names.
Ian.
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