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  • Bug#877697: debian-policy: discourage using all 4 digits numbers in Sta

    From Bill Allombert@21:1/5 to Mattia Rizzolo on Wed Oct 4 15:50:01 2017
    XPost: linux.debian.bugs.dist

    On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 03:30:37PM +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
    Package: debian-policy
    Version: 4.1.1.0

    Policy � 5.6.11, after describing the meaning of the digits in the
    policy version, reads:

    | Thus only the first three components of the policy version are
    | significant in the Standards-Version control field, and so either
    | these three components or all four components may be specified. [5]


    Now, I've only got the impressions that packages should avoid using the
    4th digit in their Standards-Version field, as that number has no
    meaning when it comes to normative stuff. I've seen on IRC/MLs all kind
    of comments saying that the 4th digit should be avoided, and most
    packages avoid it indeed, but this wording in the policy makes me feel
    like it's pretty much the same.

    While I agree with you, what are the practical negative effect of
    putting the 4th digit in the Standards-Version field ?

    Lintian could easily be made to flag it, but is it worth the trouble ?

    Cheers,
    --
    Bill. <[email protected]>

    Imagine a large red swirl here.

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  • From Mattia Rizzolo@21:1/5 to All on Wed Oct 4 15:40:01 2017
    XPost: linux.debian.bugs.dist

    Package: debian-policy
    Version: 4.1.1.0

    Policy � 5.6.11, after describing the meaning of the digits in the
    policy version, reads:

    | Thus only the first three components of the policy version are
    | significant in the Standards-Version control field, and so either
    | these three components or all four components may be specified. [5]


    Now, I've only got the impressions that packages should avoid using the
    4th digit in their Standards-Version field, as that number has no
    meaning when it comes to normative stuff. I've seen on IRC/MLs all kind
    of comments saying that the 4th digit should be avoided, and most
    packages avoid it indeed, but this wording in the policy makes me feel
    like it's pretty much the same.

    --
    regards,
    Mattia Rizzolo

    GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18 4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540 .''`.
    more about me: https://mapreri.org : :' : Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri `. `'`
    Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia `-

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  • From Bill Allombert@21:1/5 to Sean Whitton on Wed Oct 4 20:30:01 2017
    XPost: linux.debian.bugs.dist

    On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 10:22:48AM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
    Hello,

    On Wed, Oct 04 2017, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

    I include it because it makes it unambiguous which version of policy
    the team referred to when preparing the package. Micro policy
    releases are not supposed to change the normative stuff but sometimes
    they clarify the text of normative sections and that context can be
    useful for understanding whether a later clarification was taken into account in the packaging.

    My feeling is that this is fine and that those comments on IRC/MLs are misguided. But I could easily be persuaded otherwise.

    This seems like a reasonable use of all four digits.

    I would like to reassign this to Lintian, which could say "did you
    really mean to use all four?"

    Doing that would be lead to the removal of four digits by maintainers
    for all practical prupose. Nobody is going to add a lintian exception
    for this. If four digits are fine, then lintian whould not warn against
    them.

    Cheers,
    --
    Bill. <[email protected]>

    Imagine a large red swirl here.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)