Bill Allombert <bill.allomb...@math.u-bordeaux1.fr> writes: > Well, I think we should somehow do a better job of documenting in the > Policy itself why a decision has been made. If you look at the threads > "Debian version numbers and strcmp()" and "mail_spool default mode is > 0660" it would have been very useful to have a pointer to the rational > of the original decision.
This was one of the things that Manoj had discussed as part of the reworking of Policy to use Docbook. The way I envisioned this is similar to the way the POSIX standard is presented: a set of normative sections stating the requirements, and then a set of informative sections providing examples and additional clarifying information. I think a summary of the reasons for a decision would be a great thing to include. One could then produce a manual with or without the additional explanatory information. We do have a volunteer to work on a style guide for a Docbook-based Policy, sometime after the lenny release. Until that time, I'm not sure if we should try to shoehorn something into the existing format (which doesn't have a clear space for it), or rely on the changelog documentation with the intention of later importing as much of that as possible into a richer format. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
