On Sun, Apr 03, 2011 at 07:59:10PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > sergey <sergey_i...@rambler.ru> writes: > > I do appreciate the problem that you're trying to solve here, but I don't > think that Policy is the place to do it. > > There are a couple of different types of documentation in play, and the > requirements in terms of stating the applicable version are different. > For Debian Policy, and for similar documents like the related policy > documents, the Developer's Reference, the Maintainer's Guide, and the > getting started guide, the target audience is developers or potential > developers. Therefore, all of these documents should be assumed to target > sid. It's not very useful, from a Debian perspective, to have developer > documentation for older versions, since Debian doesn't update older > versions except in very specific situations.
Such documents are available as Debian packages, so implicitly the package provided in lenny should target lenny, etc. > For user manuals, I can definitely see why it would be nice to clearly > state in the manual what version of Debian it applies to, so that people > don't mistakenly try to apply its advice to some version other than what > it was written for. But I think that adding a Policy requirement to do > this is overkill. I would guess that the maintainers of those documents > would be quite happy to add such a note if appropriate (or explain why it > isn't appropriate) in response to a bug filed against those specific > packages. Such documents can get outdated. We need a way for users to notice that. However since they are generally not packaged, any policy recommendation might get ignored. > If you run across a document that's for end-users, that doesn't contain a > note about what Debian releases it applies to, and where you think such a > note would be useful, please do file a bug against that package. I think > that's an entirely appropriate request. Agreed. > If the document is on the web and you can't figure out what the > corresponding Debian package is, well, that's actually another bug -- > documents maintained as a Debian package should probably say that > somewhere to aid bug filing against the web version. But you can file the > bug against www.debian.org, noting that you can't tell what package it > should be filed against, and they can reassign it for you. > > I'm marking this bug as wontfix but will leave it open in case other folks > disagree with my reasoning and would like to argue that Policy should do > something here. It appears that a "Debian Documentation Policy" (see <http://www.debian.org/doc/docpolicy>) exists. I suggest that this report be reassigned to this project if at all possible. CCing debian-...@lists.debian.org for advice. Cheers, -- Bill. <ballo...@debian.org> Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110405180904.GC10122@yellowpig
