Package: debian-policy Severity: minor
Section 6.1, third paragraph, says that maintainer scripts, should exit with non-zero on error. Then section 6.3 (titled "Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts"), says: "Each script should return a zero exit status for success, or a nonzero one for failure." First, I don't think this has anything to do with the controlling terminal. Second, this info should be regrouped in one place (not merely delete the second one, because the first one does not explicitely say it should be zero on success). Maybe the best would be to create a new section, just after the introduction. Proposal: 6.2 Exit status The package management system looks at the exit status from these scripts. Each script must return a zero exit status for success, or a nonzero one for failure. It is important that they exit with a non-zero status if there is an error, so that the package management system can stop its processing. For shell scripts this means that you almost always need to use set -e (this is usually true when writing shell scripts, in fact). It is also important, of course, that they don't exit with a non-zero status if everything went well. Feel free to adjust. Note that I replaced the "should return..." by "must return..." as I think it is a requirement, but undo that if I am wrong, AINAPE (policy expert!). Cheers, Daniel -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers testing APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (99, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.12-1-686 Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]