On Sun, May 10, 2009, Steve Langasek wrote: > I'm really surprised to see this approach getting traction. To me, this > seems like a significant, unprecedented departure from the kinds of > interfaces we've mandated in Policy in the past (i.e., environment > variables, executables and command-line options). While one build helper or > another may mandate Makefile includes, there's never been anything of the > sort in Policy, and I don't think it's good to add such a thing now. I > thought it was generally recognized that it's a Bad Idea to implement config > files using your interpreter's 'include' functionality, but that's basically > what we have here. > > If there's any intention at all that Policy eventually mandate use of these > Makefile includes, then at a minimum I think Policy needs to *very* tightly > constrain what dpkg is allowed to put in those files, to avoid future > incompatibilities. But unfortunately, if we're going to support site files, > we're in no position to enforce such requirements there; so packages are > still subject to breakage from admins populating their site file with random > settings (or syntax errors?).
Full ack, thanks for putting it so clearly -- Loïc Minier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
