Walter Landry <wlan...@caltech.edu> writes: > Ole Streicher <oleb...@debian.org> wrote: >> What are the general guidelines here? Somewhere in written form? The >> DFSG does not contain a hint here. > > The rule of thumb that I have seen applied is that 'source' is the > preferred form of modification for the people making modifications. > If a person really prefers editing 1400 character lines, then that is > the source. However, you can not just state that you prefer that.
I'd prefer just to ignore the line: it is a comment line that is not needed for the functionality, so I see no reason to touch it at all. The only reason to touch it for me would be to delete it. > So if a file is generated mechanically, whatever scripts that generate > the file are the 'source'. However, if someone actually edited the > 1400 character line, then it could become 'source'. Similarly, one could patch a binary executable with a hex editor :-) > I have not seen the example of CVS status lines before. I think > Debian generally ignores that kind of technical violation because > > 1) CVS is free software > 2) Those lines are not critical to functionality. > 3) The lines are very short and not difficult to modify. If you want to keep consistency, it is actually difficult to impossible: The $ Id: $ line is created from the RCS file from the CVS server which is usually missing in the sources. Generally, one would "prefer" not to touch this line at all, but to interact with the CVS server -- which is not possible since the CVS tree is not included. So, there is no difference to the long line from the questioned file: without keeping consistency, editing is simple (and both have no influence on the functionality), but if you want to keep the consistency (and some people would *prefer* that), it is difficult to impossible. So, strictly speaking, CVS (or RCS, or SVN) autogenerated lines are not source and should not exist in Debian sources, right? Best regards Ole
