On Thu, Sep 08, 2016 at 05:28:18PM +0200, Markus Koschany wrote: > On 08.09.2016 14:30, Ian Jackson wrote: > > Emmanuel Bourg writes ("Re: Network access during build"): > >> That makes sense, but in this case what is the usefulness of the > >> Standards-Version field? And more precisely, why is it considered an > >> error [1] to omit it? > > > > The field is useful because it shows the most recent version of the > > policy that the package has been checked against. It is useful to > > occasionally update packages to the latest standards, and the > > Standards-Version field can be used to spot how long it has been for > > this particular package. Policy comes with handy summaries of the > > changes, for use when checking/updating a package. > > I agree with Emmanuel and I also think that the Standards-Version field > should be deprecated. People expect that a package complies with the > most recent Policy and latest standards when it is updated. That's an > implicit expectation that should not require a regular and tedious > update of a debian/control field. If a package doesn't comply with
That is certainly not true for orphaned packages with minimal maintenance by the QA team. At least when I do a QA upload I usually don't bump the Standards-Version field, simply because I don't know the package that well. -Ralf.