Package: debian-policy Version: 4.4.1.1 Severity: normal In attempting to revise recent GRs to use the same terminology as Policy, I got frustrated again by the lack of precision of our current language. This is an attempt to make a minor improvement. It doesn't go all the way to using all-caps terms the way that RFC 2119 does; I think that might be an improvement, but it was a larger change than I wanted to tackle.
Changes: * Add "prohibited" to the terms for requirements * Add another tier (Policy advice) using encouraged and discouraged * Stop confusing may and optional with wishlist bugs * Add terms for the collective set of Policy requirements at each tier * Explicitly state the long-standing policy that the release team determines release-critical bugs diff --git a/policy/ch-scope.rst b/policy/ch-scope.rst index 2404e84..98983e9 100644 --- a/policy/ch-scope.rst +++ b/policy/ch-scope.rst @@ -31,21 +31,41 @@ part of Debian policy itself. The appendices to this manual are not necessarily normative, either. Please see :doc:`ap-pkg-scope` for more information. -In the normative part of this manual, the words *must*, *should* and -*may*, and the adjectives *required*, *recommended* and *optional*, are -used to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines in this -policy document. Packages that do not conform to the guidelines denoted -by *must* (or *required*) will generally not be considered acceptable -for the Debian distribution. Non-conformance with guidelines denoted by -*should* (or *recommended*) will generally be considered a bug, but will -not necessarily render a package unsuitable for distribution. Guidelines -denoted by *may* (or *optional*) are truly optional and adherence is -left to the maintainer's discretion. - -These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities -*serious* (for *must* or *required* directive violations), *minor*, -*normal* or *important* (for *should* or *recommended* directive -violations) and *wishlist* (for *optional* items). [#]_ +In the normative part of this manual, the following terms are used to +describe the importance of each statement: [#]_ + +* The terms *must* and *must not*, and the adjectives *required* and + *prohibited*, denote strong requirements. Packages that do not conform + to these requirements will generally not be considered acceptable for + the Debian distribution. These statements correspond to the *critical*, + *grave*, and *serious* bug severities (normally serious). They are + collectively called *Policy requirements*. + +* The terms *should* and *should not*, and the adjective *recommended*, + denote best practices. Non-conformance with these guidelines will + generally be considered a bug, but will not necessarily render a package + unsuitable for distribution. These statements correspond to bug + severities of *important*, *normal*, and *minor*. They are collectively + called *Policy recommendations*. + +* The adjectives *encouraged* and *discouraged* denote places where Policy + offers advice to maintainers, but maintainers are free to follow or not + follow that advice. Non-conformance with this advice is normally not + considered a bug; if a bug seems worthwhile, normally it would have a + severity of *wishlist*. These statements are collectively calld *Policy + advice*. + +* The term *may* and the adjective *optional* are sometimes used to + clarify cases where it may otherwise appear that Policy is specifying a + requirement or recommendation. These words describe decisions that are + truly optional and at the maintainer's discretion. + +The Release Team may, at their discretion, downgrade a Policy requirement +to a Policy recommendation for a given release of the Debian distribution. +This may be done for only a specific package or for the archive as a +whole. This provision is intended to provide flexibility to balance the +quality standards of the distribution against the release schedule and the +importance of making a stable release. Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even when building a package which is to be distributed in some other way or -- System Information: Debian Release: bullseye/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 5.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled debian-policy depends on no packages. Versions of packages debian-policy recommends: ii libjs-sphinxdoc 1.8.5-3 Versions of packages debian-policy suggests: pn doc-base <none> -- no debconf information
