OK, here is a brief summary of many of the bug reports currently open
against debian-policy. It doesn't include those which currently
appear on Joey's weekly policy summary list. If noone objects, I
propose that we should incorporate this information into Joey's list
(I'll help with that if wanted) and retitle the bugs according to
Manoj's new system so that things become a lot clearer. My
description of the status is appended by a '?' if I am unsure of my
decision. "Proposal" includes bug reports which have not yet
presented any actual proposals, and are just in the suggestions stage.
(It also includes at least one withdrawn proposal which has reverted
to a discussion stage.) I am also using the date in Amendment or
Accepted to indicate the date on which the Proposal received the two
seconds and became an Amendment in its formal discussion period.
I suggest that we try to decide over the next two weeks or so which of
these proposals are going to be formally seconded and become
amendments, which are going to be given a longer discussion period,
and which are going to be rejected. Then by the end of June, we will
have a large collection of Accepted policy amendments, which can all
be incorporated into version 3.0.0.0 of policy. This could be made
available on this list or elsewhere for checking and then be released
by mid-July. (We need to increase the major version number as every
package will now have to use /usr/share/doc rather than /usr/doc.)
This would presumably be in reasonable time for the potato freeze, so
that the changes which are important and need to be made can be.
Proposals currently marked as "normal"
--------------------------------------
8221 No ispell-dictionary virtual package listed
[Can probably be closed as the ispell packages all cooperate]
Status: Proposal
20099 No policy on /etc/environment
[Should we have one? A policy on it or even should we have it?]
Status: Proposal
31441 Require both fcntl() and dotlock locking for mailbox locking to
prevent mail loss when using NFS
[Originally raised as a critical bug against mutt]
Status: Proposal
32263 Desire to split /cgi-bin/ into system and local directories
[Quite contentious but with good arguments for it if done
properly]
Status: Proposal
32448 Change policy 3.3.4 to use /etc/rcS.d instead of the obsolete
/etc/rc.boot
[This should be easy: no packages in potato appear to use
/etc/rc.boot any longer]
Status: Proposal
33076 New wording for definition of "extra" priority
Status: Amendment 1999/05/30
33826 Para 3.3.2 (note number change!) says /etc/init.d scripts must
be named /etc/init.d/<package>; what about using '.sh' suffix?
Status: Proposal
34652 Should there be a /usr/bin/nawk program on Debian systems?
Status: Proposal
35510 The status of mirror's license.
Status: Sticky legal issue for -policy to decide upon.
Proposals currently marked as "wishlist"
----------------------------------------
11094 Policy should explicitly mention lockfiles, referring to the
FSSTND (now FHS)
Status: Accepted ?
20373 Installation scripts should only run /etc/init.d scripts when
in an appropriate runlevel
Status: Proposal
21585 /etc/init.d/script files need not be conffiles if they are
actively handled by maintainer scripts
Status: Proposal
21820 A bug in the debian-emacs-policy example script
Status: This should surely not be in -policy?! I'm reassigning
back to emacsen-common.
21969 Clarification about Standards-Version
Summary of a huge thread/flamewar: the changelog for version
2.4.1.0 of debian-policy contains a description of the
version-numbering scheme of debian-policy, packaging-manual and
devel-ref which are all meant to agree on the first three
components (major, minor version and major patchlevel). They
may, however, disagree on minor patchlevel. Thus it makes
sense only to use the first three components in the
Standards-Version field of packages, although use of all four
components is also OK. This is documented in the changelog,
but was never actually incorporated into the policy
document. A flamewar ensued about the meaning of the
changelog sentence....
Status: Accepted ?
22518 Maintainer scripts should not fail if /etc/aliases is not a
file (similar to newaliases)
Status: Proposal
22935 Hardlinks to conffiles should be avoided wherever possible
Status: Proposal
23355 Non-maintainer bug report closing
Status: ?
[Can probably be closed now that we have a 'Fixed' severity]
23661 Security implications of /usr/doc being accessible via
web-servers
Status: Proposal
[This one was apparently brought up on Bugtraq recently, and
really needs dealing with]
24067 Is it OK to close a bug without fixing it?
[Obviously not, but there is a debate (flamewar) between
Santiago and James T over whether this happened in this case]
Status: Not even a proposal
24133 Default news server should also be looked for using NNTPSERVER
environment variable
Status: Proposal
24695 man-browser should be in virtual packages list
Status: Proposal
[This could be closed if we class all manpage readers and users
as cooperating.]
24772 Why are users' mailboxes mode 660 user.mail and not mode 600?
Status: Proposal
25199 X-dependent binaries should live in /usr/bin, not /usr/X11R6/bin
Status: Proposal
25533 debian-policy package should contain FHS
Status: will follow as a result of accepted FSSTND -> FHS move
25882 uid/gid 100 should be statically allocated
Status: Proposal
[I believe that this is a bug in base-passwd and not in policy,
as did IWJ who submitted the bug in the first place.]
26159 Contact name in virtual-packages-list should be debian-policy
Status: Proposal
[We should implement this one soon; it's not really a policy
issue but rather a question of who should be contacted with
proposals. To have proposals sent to Christian is not really
very useful, IMHO.]
26915 Debian Logo License
Status: Amendment
[But what's the proposal? The bug report doesn't say. This
should probably be closed, especially in light of the recent
vote.]
26995 Problem with fsstnd DVI file
Status: not a policy proposal; should probably be closed,
especially as we are moving to FHS
27137 Reword 2.1.6: programs whose authors encourage donations but
claim that not donating is immoral etc. should go in non-free,
not contrib; contrib's defn changed
Status: Proposal
27205 Daemons should not run as root unless absolutely necessary
Status: Proposal
27869 Icon locations: where should xpm files and the like live?
Status: Proposal
28747 Copyright notice and sect. 6.5 should be updated to reflect new
GPL etc. locations in /usr/share/common-licenses
Status: Accepted 1999/04/05
29770 (a) Rewrite policy to make a clear distinction between
conffiles (thing's listed in a package's conffile) and
configuration files
(b) Modify policy to say: "A package may not modify a
configuration file of another package, except by
arrangement (with that package or by policy)."
Status: Proposal
[This should be handled together with #30122]
30036 Including sub-policies (emacs, menu) in the debian-policy package
Status: Proposal
[How does this interact with Accepted amendment #37713?]
30122 Cleaning up policy description of conffile management
Status: Proposal
[This should be handled together with #29770]
34046 Runlevels policy: should we have a runlevel which does not
start X (specifically xdm)?
Status: Proposal
36151 /etc/init.d scripts should specify an explicit PATH so that
they find the necessary programs such as start-stop-daemon
Status: Proposal
36619 Specify what is allowed in the PAGER variable
Status: Proposal
And fixed bug #22308 can be closed.
Phew!
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
