Please CC: me if replying only via the debian-policy list, I'm only subscribed to -devel, not -policy.
This is meant to be the start of a series of discussions on integrating Emdebian with Debian. Things started with a query via the DPL about the status of the Embedded Debian Project and there has been discussion within Emdebian [0] about how this should work. This message is the start of the Policy discussion - a technical discussion will be a separate thread. (There were informal discussions about the technical sides of integrating Emdebian Grip into Debian at DebConf11 with representatives of the ftp, release and wanna-build teams. Those will form the basis of the technical details.) Please confine this thread to Policy. I've tried to summarise the background to this discussion on the Wiki [1], [2]. The aim is to discuss the differences between Debian and Emdebian Grip [3]. Where Emdebian Policy covers the other flavours of Emdebian (Baked and Crush) are an extension of these but the emphasis is on the binary-compatible Grip flavour. (Baked and Crush are very specialised, indeed Crush is currently stalled until after MultiArch is implemented.) Also, there is no role for TDebs at this stage. Whilst it is useful to not completely lose translations in the Emdebian processes, the expectation is that the "user-visible" part of a device running Emdebian Grip will typically be custom-software which does not expose the underlying system messages. Where translations might be useful, selected files for selected locales will remain available via the existing Emdebian processes as Emdebian TDebs. OK: background out of the way, here's the idea. Emdebian Grip is binary-compatible with Debian but only provides a selective list of binary packages (with unchanged sources). Files which Policy-compliant packages provide are removed in an architecture-agnostic post-build process using the emgrip script, part of the emdebian-grip package [4]. Files which are a "must" requirement of Debian Policy are removed. Other "must" requirements of Debian Policy are over-ridden, e.g. copyright files must be compressed for Emdebian which reverses that Section of Debian Policy. Some "should" requirements become "must not". The process of conversion is 100% automated in an architecture-agnostic process and the changes are, therefore, applied without regard to the specific package or architecture. This leads to a predictable set of packages and a common interface for those times when users may need to pull some packages from Debian or from internal repositories. These changes are a direct result of what Emdebian users have stipulated as necessary for the purposes of making Debian usable on embedded devices. As a result, the modified packages have found widespread support from users - commercial and hobbyist. (Grip is the basis of the other flavours of Emdebian.) Summary of Emdebian Policy for the Grip flavour (listed according to the relevant Section in Debian Policy): 3.8 Essential - Packages MUST NOT include the Essential tag. 4.4 Debian changelog : debian/changelog - Debian Policy applies except that debian/changelog is not included into Emdebian packages, only retained in the source package. 5.6.9 Essential - Prohibited. No package is permitted to use this control field. 9.8 Keyboard configuration - Note that many Emdebian devices will not have a keyboard of any kind (except on-screen after installation), so packages should not use methods that prevent the use of a serial console or network console or use methods that rely on a physical keyboard. 12.1 Manual pages - Emdebian packages must not include manual pages. 12.2 Info documents - Emdebian packages must not include info documents. 12.3 Additional documentation - Most additional documentation needs to be removed. Special consideration might be available for some packages but the expectation is that all help available to the user is context-sensitive and localised via gettext (or similar) and implemented within the application code. 12.4 Preferred documentation formats - context-sensitive tooltips implemented by the code within the application and localised using gettext via Emdebian TDebs. 12.6 Examples - Packages must not include examples. 12.7 Changelogs - Packages must not carry any changelog files except in the source package. Changelogs (Debian or upstream) must not be installed. 12.5 Copyright information - Copyright information must be compressed with gzip -9. Licences should not be installed by default. The option to install compressed licences could be provided. So is it suitable to simply keep EmdebianPolicy as a set of changes from Debian Policy? Is it better to complicate Debian Policy with a set of footnotes? [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-embedded/2011/04/msg00013.html [1] http://wiki.debian.org/EmdebianPolicy/Background [2] http://wiki.debian.org/EmdebianPolicy [3] http://www.emdebian.org/grip/ [4] http://packages.qa.debian.org/e/emdebian-grip.html -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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