On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Chris Waters wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 02:06:05PM -0600, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> > Package: debian-policy
>
> > 2.3.9.1 Prompting in maintainer scripts says:
> > "Prompting may be accomplished by hand, or by communicating with a
> > program, such as debconf, which conforms to the Debian Configuration
> > management specification, version 2 or higher."
>
> > The grammar is ambiguous
>
> Common sense makes the resolution of this purported ambiguity pretty
> clear. If you lack common sense, then working on Debian is probably
> not for you. If the spec were not part of the requirement, why bother
> mentioning it?
>
Oops, I guess I looked too hard.
> and "by hand" is vague.
>
> Hmm, on the one hand, I want to agree with you, but on the other hand,
> this excessive nitpicking is starting to drive me up the wall.
> Consider it an intelligence test. If you can't figure it out, then a)
> stick with debconf or b) go find something less challenging to do in
> your spare time. :)
>
I agree that this does seem like nitpicking, but they are valid points.
Perhaps I should accumulate a bunch of these "nits" and make them into one
"bug". ;-) I'm reading the document thoroughly to prepare myself for
entering the new maintainers process. Since I'm reading debian-policy
anyway, I figured the document couldn't hurt having a little polish put on
it. I'm enjoying reading the document and checking it's semantics. I could
omit bug reports or combine them, but since I'm going so slowly and
throughly I figured I'd file bugs as I saw errors, almost one at a time.
My intelligence tells me that if "by hand" is not replaced then technically
I can file "serious" bugs against packages that do not use "hand" or
debconf. My intelligence also tells me that filing such bugs would not be
looked on favorably. I come to the conclusion that perhaps policy "should"
be fixed. Arguments to fix such minor bugs should not need to get long. I
understand the annoyance that could come with for example filing a bug
against many misspelled words instead of filing one bug listing them all.
These bugs that I'm filing are mostly of different types and if I
understand correctly bugs should be filed for each issue individually. I do
not intend to get on anyones nerves, but I would like to see these small
changes made. I believe that the best solution is therefore for me to stop
filing normal to minor bugs about semantics, grammar, spelling etc and file
them in one large bug
I haven't finished reading the document thoroughly, but I think I will be
filing some good wishlist bugs for policy addition. Some of my wishlist
ideas seem like common sense to me, but I see that they're ignored. My
point being that just because something seems like common sense, doesn't
mean that everyone knows enough to follow it. Ie, I will still file bugs
against debian-policy for semantics, grammar, spelling etc unless I am
asked not to (although now, probably only one more if any).
Sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused.
Drew Daniels
