On Fri, 6 Jun 2003 13:52:58 +0100, Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.9.0 Severity: wishlist
> Every so often, somebody encounters the bit of the policy manual
> that says:
> Packages must not depend on packages with lower priority values
> (excluding build-time dependencies). In order to ensure this, the
> priorities of one or more packages may need to be adjusted.
> Seeing the "must", they then go and file a bunch of serious bugs.
> However, priorities are set by ftpmaster overrides, and, even if the
> maintainer uploads a "fixed" version of the package, the priority
> will still be wrong in the Packages file until an ftpmaster goes and
> changes the override. Thus, filing bugs against individual packages
> for this is basically a waste of time. Instead of wasting a number
> of people's time and effort with lots of release-critical bugs, all
> the reporter needed to do was ask for the priorities of (ideally) a
> batch of packages to be changed. (I'm not sure in exactly what
> format ftpmaster would prefer reports like this - perhaps somebody
> could clarify - but I do know that hassling maintainers is a
> horribly ineffective way to get this job done.)
So fix the bug in the package, and clone it and assign the
clone to ftp.
It is a bug if the package has the wrong priority, and it is a
bug if the override file needs fixing. Just because there are two
locations where the fix needs to go in does not invalidate the bug.
In other words, I would object to this change, since this
would relax rules that allow me to just install base or standard
packages from a CD, without needing extraneous packages, with very
little benefit to anyone that I can see.
manoj
--
Scott's First Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look
right. Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and
corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first
place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it
will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
equation.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
