On Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 04:14:45PM +0100, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> It would make the Policy consistent. Currently, it allows maintainer scripts
> to be anything you would like. The only thing that is required is that they
> must be proper executables. They can even be binaries. Then why does the
> Policy force everybode to write the rules file as a Makefile ?
The API for maintainer scripts is defined by old packaging manual/new
policy and is very unlikely to change. And has been pointed out,
binaries can be necessary (eg, for bash).
The API for debian/rules has never been formalised because they've
always been assumed to be executable makefiles, which thus have an
implied API, and this has led to coding that makes use of this
assumption.
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://people.debian.org/~jdg
Donate free food to the world's hungry: see http://www.thehungersite.com/
