Source: debian-policy Followup-For: Bug #1010229 Here is a more formal patch. Would a review be easyer with a merge request?
>From 0a265ca1ae2e51571cb5c19aa620943125c46f73 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicolas Boulenguez <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 04:04:15 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Improve wording about Provides and versions
Move the footnote near the related sentence. Mention the restriction to "=" near Provides, as already done for Built-Using. https://bugs.debian.org/1010229 --- policy/ch-relationships.rst | 7 ++++--- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/policy/ch-relationships.rst b/policy/ch-relationships.rst index fb9dae8..4bac4a5 100644 --- a/policy/ch-relationships.rst +++ b/policy/ch-relationships.rst @@ -28,8 +28,7 @@ below followed by a version number, in the format described in The relations allowed are ``<<``, ``<=``, ``=``, ``>=`` and ``>>`` for strictly earlier, earlier or equal, exactly equal, later or equal and -strictly later, respectively. The exception is the Provides field, for -which only ``=`` is allowed. [#]_ +strictly later, respectively. [#]_ Whitespace may appear at any point in the version specification subject to the rules in :ref:`s-controlsyntax`, and must appear @@ -450,7 +449,9 @@ they can say: and the ``bar-plus`` package will now also satisfy the dependency for the ``foo`` package. -A ``Provides`` field may contain version numbers, and such a version number +A ``Provides`` field may contain version numbers, +but only with the "exactly equal" ("=") relation. +Such a version number will be considered when considering a dependency on or conflict with the virtual package name. For example, given the following packages: -- 2.47.3
