(Matthias drew my attention to this thread. Sorry I'm a bit late ...) Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matthias Klose wrote: > > I haven't yet seen any reasoning why people are seeing that > > information as "cluttering the database" or just as "ugly". > > Causing unrelated programs like dpkg-repack to spew warning messages is, > by definition, ugly. > > Using X- fields, which are intended for nonstandard extensions, in the > core of Debian is also ugly.
The reason the X*- fields have to be named like that in the package control file is that dpkg-source et al don't know which output control files to copy them into. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using X*- fields in a Debian-mandated way. The alternative would be to make the whole new mechanism depend on updated dpkg-source which seems pointless given that dpkg-source has an extension mechanism here for precisely this purpose. It would be nice if dpkg-source (and dpkg-deb) could be taught not to warn about this field. But the warning is harmless too: it's there to point out if you accidentally misspelling a field name. So ignoring the warning is fine. > Modify dpkg to properly add new fields if they're going to have common > usage in Debian. Using X- fields is fine for prototyping but not for > final implementations. I disagree. One of the things the IETF discovered was that renaming fields (or things in other namespaces) causes a lot of trouble and is to be avoided. So in general new IETF standards don't expect you to use x-* for new standards-track activities. Existing X-* fields have in some cases been grandfathered. We have to use X- for these fields for the reasons I've explained above. So I think we should be prepared to officially bless these particular names. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
