Package: dpkg-dev-el Version: 29.5-1 Severity: normal Hi, I've a proposal for a (supposedly) better convention about finalized/unfinalized debian/changelog entries.
Currently: - finalized entries have real distribution names (e.g., "unstable"), and maintainer / timestamp after "--" at the entry end - unfinalized entries have real distribution names too, but no maintainer / timestamp after "--" The problems I see with that: 1) finalized entries are not distinguishable from valid, yet not uploaded entries in VCSs (the equivalent of "UNRELEASED" entries implemented by dch in devscripts) 2) unfinalized entries are not properly parseable by dpkg-parsechangelog (which indeed complains) and strictly speacking do not adhere to the debian/changelog syntax Consequences of (2): - one cannot know who is the author of the text in a mono-author (i.e. with no "[ Name Surname ]" tags) entry - packages are not properly buildable by automatic tools which checkout packages from VCS and build them, a la svnbuildstat.debian.net My proposal to fix that is basically to implement the current dch conventions, namely: - keep author name / timestamp after -- and use "UNRELEASED" as the distribution for unfinalized changelog entries. Also, do not touch the timestamp until an entry is finalized (which avoids useless VCS commit diffs) - upon finalization: fix UNRELEASED and update the timestamp Also, this would have the additional benefit of shamelessly integrating the workflow of people using dch with those of people using the Emacs changelog mode. FWIW, I belive the former set of people is way larger than the latter. What do you think of this? Cheers. -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=it_IT.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=it_IT.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages dpkg-dev-el depends on: ii debian-el 29.5-1 Emacs helpers specific to Debian u ii emacs-snapshot [emacsen] 1:20090228-1 The GNU Emacs editor (development ii emacs-snapshot-nox [emacsen 1:20090228-1 The GNU Emacs editor (without X su Versions of packages dpkg-dev-el recommends: ii wget 1.11.4-2 retrieves files from the web Versions of packages dpkg-dev-el suggests: ii dpkg-dev 1.14.25 Debian package development tools -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
