Hello, On Sun 31 Oct 2021 at 11:18AM +01, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version 4.6.0.0
>
> Hi!
>
> dpkg 1.19.0 introduced, following the request in #555743, a bunch of new
> substvars. Notably, it now handles ${source:Synopsis} and
> ${source:Extended-Description} that are described as follow:
>
> source:Synopsis
> The source package synopsis, extracted from the source stanza
> Description field, if it exists
>
> source:Extended-Description
> The source package extended description, extracted from the
> source stanza Description field, if it exists
>
>
> Currently Policy ยง5.2 lists the allowed known fields, and Description is
> accepted only in the "binary package paragraphs", not in the one for the
> source package.
>
>
> As documented in the bug report mentioned above, these are the main
> benefits of having a Description in the source paragraph:
> * helps de-duplicate the description in the binary paragraphs (mostly
> relevant for libraries and other packages that build many binaries
> and share a common description). Note that this would only
> de-duplicate d/control, the binary DEBIAN/control of each binary
> package would still keep the generated long description.
> * ship a generic source-level descrption of the package, which just
> make sense if one thinks about it
> * as a consequence of the above, a bunch of tools (DDPO, PTS, etc)
> would be able to drop the weird and unnatural logic that they use to
> pick a description for the source package
> The main "bad" consequence would be that Description would be exported
> in the .dsc and as such end up in the Sources index. This is probably
> what we want anyway, but with all the people complaining about how big
> the index is getting it's something to consider. However it's also true
> that realistically very few packages are going to make use of this
> facility in the near future so it shouldn't really matter IMHO.
Hrm. Could dak be modified to filter this out of the Sources file?
--
Sean Whitton
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