On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> I am rather surprised at this statement. There was a discussion last fall
> on the issue and it was settled that debstd's behavior was satisfying the
> policy. Is there any newfound reason for compressing small changelogs?
I don't remember that discussion. Perhaps you can give us some pointers
(dates, bug reports, etc.).
Anyways, the current policy manual (2.3.0.1) says in section 5.3,
Additional documentation:
... text documentation should be ... compressed with gzip -9 unless it
is small.
However, section 5.8, Changelog files, is more explicit:
Both [changelog and changelog.Debian] should be installed compressed
using gzip -9, as they will become large with time even if they start
out small.
As section 5.8 is written explicitely for changelog files, this overrides
section 5.3. So changelog files should _always_ be compressed, no matter
how large they are.
As this policy hasn't been changed since I'm maintaining the manual
(about 9 months) I don't know why debstd's behaviour has been considered
"satisfying" before.
> The policy should clearly say what should be done (not wasting space) but
> not state how it is to be accomplished.
I think the policy is clear in this point.
> I think I am wasting my time here. This whole compression business is
> soooo important. I wonder if we ever get to fixing real bugs.
Then why are you still objected to fixing debstd to apply to policy? Since
someone already sent you a patch for this (check the bug tracking system)
this shouldn't be much work.
Thanks,
Chris
-- _,, Christian Schwarz
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