Quoting Niels Thykier (2018-01-02 12:19:00)
> Jonas Smedegaard:
> > Quoting Niels Thykier (2018-01-02 09:23:00)
> >> Andrey Rahmatullin:
> >>> On Mon, Jan 01, 2018 at 08:40:38PM +0100, Jérémy Lal wrote:
> >>>> wouldn't it be simpler to couple debhelper dependency to 
> >>>> Standards-Version ?
> >>> There are packages which may break with newer debhelper, but can be 
> >>> easily updated to the current policy.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Also, there are packages that deliberately hold back on adopting new 
> >> debhelper compat levels because they want to be backportable as-is to 
> >> stable (even up to oldoldstable in some cases).
> >>
> >> That said, I do agree that a maintainer should have to care about 
> >> fewer turning wheels in debian/control than what our current packaging 
> >> design requires us to do.
> > 
> > Maybe extend debhelper to support compat file content of "latest". Or 
> > simply treat a missing compat file as implicitly meaning "latest".
> > 
> > 
> >  - Jonas
> > 
> 
> I have considered it, but it will effectively lead to a situation where
> I cannot ever make a new compat level.
> 
> The point of compat levels is to change behaviour in an incompatible
> way.  Because it is opt-in, a new compat level breaks 0 packages (except
> a handful of early adopters).  Whereas if I implement a named "latest"
> compat level, then I possibly break every single package with that named
> compat level.
>   As more and more adopt it, the compat bump will break more and more
> packages leading to a situation where it is nearly impossible for me to
> implement an actual compat bump.

Breakage will not burden development of debhelper if you a) document 
clearly (perhaps even spew a warning at runtime) that no promise is made 
about stability when not using a fixed compatibility level, and b) you 
do not introduce a new compatibility level late in the release cycle.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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