Package: debian-policy Version: 3.9.1.0 Severity: wishlist Dear all,
I have been reading §5.1 (Syntax of control files) many times recently, and would like propose clarifications about a couple of points. If consensus emerges, I will write a patch. Non-wrappable field values -------------------------- §5.1 contains the following paragraph: In fields where it is specified that lines may not wrap, only a single line of data is allowed and whitespace is not significant in a field body. Whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages, architectures, files or anything else) or version numbers, or between the characters of multi-character version relationships. The Architecture and Closes fields seem to follow this convention, without referring to it (they do not specify that ‘lines may not wrap’). The Distribution also allows a list of values, but not for the Debian archive. The Binary field also contains a space-separated list of items, but is wrappable. Many other fields are single line, but they do not contain a list of space-separated items. For instance, the Maintainer and Urgencey fields. Policy chapter 5 contains only two times the word “wrap”, one in the above quotation and one in the context of the Description field (§5.6.13), in the part that explain how to specify verbatim parts in extened descriptions. There are other possible interpretations of the paragraph I cited above, but I could not find a field that would fit with them. I am working on DEP-5, which aims at using the Debian control file format, I have the feeling that the paragraph that I quoted above makes it more difficult to describe how text can be wrapped or not on multi-line fields. Unless it has a crucial role that I have overlooked, I propose its supppression. Ordering of the paragraphs -------------------------- I always had the impression that the Debian control files had one header paragraph, followed by other paragraphs that were not ordered. If it is not the case, that is: if parsers are required to remember the order of the paragraphs. I think that it would be useful to write it in §5.1. Line escape and paragraph separators ------------------------------------ “Blank lines, or lines consisting only of spaces and tabs, are not allowed within field values or between fields”. The Description and Changes fields introduce a convention to escape blank lines, representing them by a space followed by a dot. How describing this convention directly in §5.1? Also, while submitting this bug, I found #501930 about paragraph separation. If the outcome of this discussion is a patch, I propose to let it addres #501930 as well, by adding “lines consisting only of spaces and tabs” to the second sentence of §5.1. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
