Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: wishlist
We have some unwritten packaging rules and it would be good to write them
down even if some of them appear to be obvious to most of us. I think in
particular to stuff like:
- a package must at least be upgradable from one stable release to the next:
- transitional packages are required when the software is renamed
- {pre,post}{inst,rm} snippets dealing with upgrade issues must be kept
for at least one release (but it's better to keep them for 2-3
releases)
- a package must provide some interface stability (names of programs,
ABI/API of libraries, location of data files, etc.) when other packages
depend on it. In that case, any change must be coordinated and
appropriate dependencies must be added. It should give examples of
Breaks:, bumped Depends when an change is made in a non-backwards
compatible way, temporary compatibility symlinks, etc.
We have enough cases like this that it would be good to be able to point
to a policy chapter dealing with such requiremnts when we file bug
reports. Also it's important information that newbie packagers should be
able to learn somewhere, and I think policy is the most appropriate
place. It's not only best-practice, it's a must have.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (150,
'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.9.4 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
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