Manoj Srivastava writes ("Re: Processed: Do not make hardlinks to conffiles"):
> Isee. Well, if you had read the message in -policy, which
> people with ptoposals are supposed to, you would have seen the
> substantive response.
I can see no relevant message on debian-policy in the last three
weeks. The only thing I can see on debian-policy in the last three
weeks is your message to the bug system to close an reorganise a whole
lot of bugs, and the bug system's reply.
I've just looked in the mailing list archives too and there are no
relevant messages this year that I can find with the string `hard' in
the subject. Furthermore, the bug report itself has no helpful
content, and no message was sent to me as the submitter of the bug
report to tell me what was wrong with it.
The fact (if it is true) that some procedure has not been followed
does not mean that the bug is not a bug.
> Ian> Circumstantial evidence - the use of the word `REJECTED' in the
> Ian> Subject suggests that this hasn't been fixed.
>
> This is not a bug in policy. It can be taken as a request to
> amend policy -- and as such, needs to follow guidelines for policy
No, you as maintainer of the policy manual can decide to change it.
Constitution s.3.1(1):
An individual Developer may
1. make any technical or nontechnical decision with regard to their
own work;
The fact that you have chosen to delegate to a mailing list doesn't
prevent you from changing your mind on this point.
> You report had been open for two whole years, with no action
> being taken.
I think you should have taken some action, namely to change the policy
manual to document what is obviously true: namely, that making
hardlinks to dpkg-handled conffiles doesn't work properly and should
not be done.
What action do you think I should have taken, and why should I have to
subscribe continuously to the policy list for two years and read it
without fail to find this out ?
Furthermore, simply closing a bug that was assigned to policy is not
the right answer in any case even if it is right that the policy
manual should not change. For example, in this case it is either the
case that dpkg should handle conffile hardlinks differently, or it's
the case that the policy manual should be changed to prohibit these
hardlinks. If you think the policy manual is right then you should
reassign the bug to dpkg, not close it.
This also applies to
11094 (either bug in policy or xbase)
20373 (either bug in policy or almost certainly one in debhelper)
21585 (either bug in policy or xntp3)
I'm therefore reopening these bugs as well as this one.
Please can you leave these bugs open for the time being while we
discuss the matter ? Otherwise there's a risk that they might expire
while we argue.
Ian.
