Am 02.01.2018 um 21:57 schrieb Tollef Fog Heen: > ]] Markus Koschany > >> Am 02.01.2018 um 19:38 schrieb Russ Allbery: >> [...] >>> I think of the Standards-Version header in a package is a bookmark: this >>> is where I last left off in updating the packaging. It doesn't change the >>> standard by which the package should be judged. >> >> I believe that the Standards-Version header should not be part of a >> debian/control file. I understand your reasoning why you want to keep it >> and why it is useful for you. Though in my opinion a debian/control >> file, or generally speaking all information in debian/, should be hard >> requirements and either technically necessary for building a package or >> legally required. > > Why should we only include that information? There is other > information that is neither, but where it's clearly useful to version it > together with the rest of the package, such as the changelog or the > description. Or, you know, the Standards-Version for the reasons > described elsethread.
The changelog is something which can be naturally derived from the changes made to a source package and excellent tools like git-buildpackage ("gbp dch") make this kind of work rather simple. A package description usually doesn't change. Only in rare circumstances it has to be adjusted. A Standards-Version header changes frequently, gets obsolete even faster and provides no valuable information to the end-user of a package (which a package description and changelog obviously do) > Also, the Standards-Version header is only recommended to be included, > it's not mandatory. If its existence offends you so much and you have > so few bugs to fix in your packages that the primary effort of > maintaining your package is updating the Standards-Version header then > just don't include it? I'm neither offended by this field nor emotionally affected by it. I'm just concerned about the fact that we maintain information in our source packages which a ) can be modified more efficiently outside of them b ) are redundant for a large group of maintainers In fact my primary effort is to improve all packages which I maintain and touch and by raising my voice on this list I hope that future maintainers will suffer less from obvious design flaws. I am not aware of a good reason why keeping the Standards-Version field would help me in achieving this goal. If the Standards-Version field is optional, great! Then let's get rid of it right now. The Lintian error is presumably as mistake, isn't it? Regards, Markus
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