Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:11:34 +0200, Andreas Metzler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: >> Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] >>> The fact that a non-version-number string literal with shell >>> redirection operators in it was a valid value of "old-version", >>> "new-version", "most-recently-configured-version", and so forth, >>> did not occur to me.
>>> I'd propose a Policy amendment dropping support for this >>> long-obsolete dpkg behavior, but I reckon I've lost my >>> Policy-amendment-proposing credentials in your eyes. >> I would support it. > Why? Hello, It is cruft and policy has over 300KB. Afaik policy's purpose is not to document historical behaviour in dpkg but technical requirements for packages in Debian. > Policy does not ask you to cater to ancient versions of > dpkg; it merely mentions historical behaviour, and you can't > retroactively go back and change dpkg implementations from way back > when. The simple fact that it is documented in policy without big fat markers "Don't implement today, this is *ancient* dpkg, it is useless today" makes it a suggestion. I recently modified some postinst and (following policy) added the nowadays completely useless test for '<unknown>' because I did not check dpkg's changelog ATM. [o] Stupid [o] Overzealous [o] Avoidable > who can see no reason to go back and edit working postinst scripts > just to remove compatibility with improbably old versions of dpkg Removing the paragraph from policy would not force you to edit working postinst scripts. cu andreas