Ok, here, as promised, is the final draft. I've let this idle for a bit while I was doing other things, so here's a quick recap for those who missed or forgot the original discussion.
Policy says you must follow the FHS, period, and then goes on to say you must do things (the /usr/doc symlink, for example) which violate the FHS. This is a logical contradiction, and potentially confusing (not to mention aesthetically unpleasing). My original idea was to make FHS-compatibility (rather than strict compliance) mandatory, but as aj and others pointed out, this leaves too much scope for things we *don't* want to allow. I also wanted to mention that packages may violate the FHS if they *absolutely* need to for some reason, but aj pointed out that packages may violate policy if they absolutely need to in any case. (If something in policy causes a package to break, that's a bug in policy.) Thus we came up with the following, which aj has said he will definitely second, and which I hope others who participated in the discussion will second as well. This is a fix to a minor but very genuine problem in policy, and I hope we can get it accepted as soon as possible. Please send your seconds ASAP. Thanks. --- debian-policy.sgml~ Mon May 21 10:45:51 2001 +++ debian-policy.sgml Thu Jun 7 11:59:58 2001 @@ -3983,8 +3983,9 @@ <p> The location of all installed files and directories must - comply with the Linux File system Hierarchy Standard - (FHS). The latest version of this document can be found + comply with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), + except where doing so would violate other terms of Debian + Policy. The latest version of this document can be found alongside this manual or on <url id="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/">. Specific questions about following the standard may be -- Chris Waters | Pneumonoultra- osis is too long [EMAIL PROTECTED] | microscopicsilico- to fit into a single or [EMAIL PROTECTED] | volcaniconi- standalone haiku