Bug#685506: debian-policy: Please add field Files-Excluded to machine readable copyright files definition

[Joe Nahmias]

Hello,

I really miss the mention of Files-Excluded in CF1.0 and when searching
found this bug.

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 02:12:37PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Contrary to an older e-mail in this bug, the consensus among the Policy
> Editors is that we can add new, optional fields to the copyright-format
> spec without bumping its version number.  This is because the addition
> of optional fields is backwards compatible.
> 
> I have not read the whole thread, but a quick scan suggests that all we
> are waiting for here is for someone to write a patch against current
> Policy's master branch.

Is this truly the case that all that's needed is a new patch? Can we get
an official ACK from one of the policy editors? I'd be happy to re-write
the original patch to apply against HEAD if that's all that is required.

--Joe


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Bug#685506: debian-policy: Please add field Files-Excluded to machine readable copyright files definition

[Joe Nahmias]

Hello again,

On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 03:14:02PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Sun 25 Oct 2020 at 09:40PM -04, Joe Nahmias wrote:
> 
> > Is this truly the case that all that's needed is a new patch? Can we get
> > an official ACK from one of the policy editors? I'd be happy to re-write
> > the original patch to apply against HEAD if that's all that is required.
> 
> Well, it would need seconding, but otherwise, ACK.
> 
> Thank you for your interest.

Well, it took me longer than I anticipated to get around to this; nevertheless,
below is my first draft at a patch to document Files-Excluded. It's my first
time writing for Debian Policy, so please let me know if I didn't use an
appropriate convention somewhere.

--Joe

---
 copyright-format-1.0.xml | 52 
 1 file changed, 52 insertions(+)

diff --git a/copyright-format-1.0.xml b/copyright-format-1.0.xml
index b8df359..102b7fa 100644
--- a/copyright-format-1.0.xml
+++ b/copyright-format-1.0.xml
@@ -246,6 +246,11 @@
 Copyright: optional.
   
 
+
+  
+Files-Excluded: 
optional.
+  
+
   
   
 The Copyright and License
@@ -672,6 +677,53 @@ Copyright 2009, 2010 Angela Watts
   
 
 
+
+  Files-Excluded
+  
+Whitespace-separated list: list of patterns indicating files that have
+been removed from the original upstream source distribution. The
+syntax for the patterns describing these files is identical to that
+of the Files
+field.
+  
+  
+Often upstream developers include additional files in their source
+distribution files that are unwanted by Debian and/or unneeded for
+use in building a Debian package, such as:
+
+  
+
+  Source files that do not meet the DFSG;
+
+  
+  
+
+  Pre-compiled executable binary or other non human-editable files;
+
+  
+  
+
+  Files intended for use with other platforms.
+
+  
+
+  
+  
+These types of files, or any others that Debian does not want to
+include in our archive, must be stripped from the upstream tarball
+prior to uploading. The Files-Excluded field serves
+to document the removal of these files from the original upstream
+source. This allows others to understand or audit how the source
+distribution in Debian is derived from the upstream source.
+  
+  
+Additionally, once documented in this manner, various tools such as
+uscan or mk-origtargz can use
+this information as instructions on how to automatically repack an
+upstream source distribution into one suitable for use within Debian.
+  
+
+
   
   
 License specification


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