Hi, On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > It would be nice to have support for a Description field in the source > stanza of debian/control. > > My rationale for that is manyfold: > > 0) (Starting intuition) most source package have a description per se, > intuitively, that is the same description you'd find on the upstream > homepage that made you download a specific software. Sure different > binary packages can have different specific purpose, but it is in > most cases possible to have a single all-encompassing description.
Should that description be exported in the .dsc then ? [ Skipping tools that would benefit from the information ] > 2) A frequent pattern in debian/control is as follows: > > Package: a > Description: a is foo bar ... > Project src is .... (COMMON TEXT) > . > In this package you find a > > Package: b > Description: b is baz quux ... > Project src is .... (COMMON TEXT) > . > In this package you find b > > Source descriptions can be used to factoring out COMMON TEXT in a > single place. > > > I'm reporting this bug report against dpkg-dev because, AFAICT, it would > be simply possible to implement this wishlist as an expansion done by > dpkg-gencontrol at the end of the build. The expansion would simply copy > the COMMON TEXT from the source package description (if any) at the > beginning of each binary package description (possibly adding a > paragraph separator "\n.\n"). I've no idea if such a naive > implementation would have drawbacks elsewhere. If I do something like that it's rather with substvars. You could use ${source:Description:body} and ${source:Description:title} in the binary package description to refer to the the corresponding parts of the source description. > What is the stance of dpkg-dev maintainers on this? I think it's ok. But some more feedback would be welcome, CCing -devel for this. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100302100514.gb6...@rivendell