Hi, I'm currently discussing this with Joey and Manoj but cannot enforce it myself due to time constraints.
For a maintainer it is very difficult to follow policy if there is no proper way to find out what needs to be done for a package that was compliant to policy version 2.5.0.0 and should now use version 3.0.0.0. What I'm missing is a detailed changelog / receipe to build, you may call it whatever you like. Joey pointed out that the debian-policy package installs the file /usr/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.text.gz . Well, it's a beginning. However, it contains entries like: - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must include the .la files in the -dev packages. Err, cool. Where do I put .la files? In /etc? - Use logrotate to rotate log files Quita cool also, how is it called? Can I just do s/savelog/logrotate/g? - section 5.8 has been rewritten (Programs for the X Window System) Way cool, what does this mean for my 20 X packages? I guess you got the idea. For a maintainer it is required at the moment to re-grok our policy everytime a new document comes out. This is time consuming and unaffordable for many of us (including me, I'm sorry). Thus we have to make it as easy as we can to get the changes into the heads of maintainers. Therefore I'd like to see a receipe that lists things which have changed between two versions of policy. For example: - Use logrotate to rotate log files. Turn savelog calls into logrotate -mode foo -user bar -group baz -olddir . -count n file [file [..]] - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must include the .la files in the -dev packages. debhelper version x.yz will do this automatic when installing .a files .la files go into /etc/libs Without this receipe we will have to face the situation that many developers are clueless about current policy and are not able to create policy compliant packages. So I ask you, please, please, please include such receipes. Regards, Joey -- The only stupid question is the unasked one. Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.