Well it's been a while, but the summary is back. Here's what's been happening on debian-policy over the holidays.
Note: for details of the policy process, see http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/policy/ch3.html. Also, this summary is available on the web at http://kitenet.net/~joey/policy-weekly.html. Accepted Amendments /var/mail and /var/spool/mail (#42052) * Consensus. * Proposed by Joseph Carter; seconded by Gordon Matzigkeit, Joey Hess and Santiago Vila. * This outlines a migration path from /var/spool/mail to /var/mail. Old systems will have /var/spool/mail with /var/mail a symlink. New machines will have the reverse. Packages using /var/mail should depend on the version of base-files that implements this. Data section (#38902) * Consensus. * Proposed on 3 Jun 1999 by Darren O. Benham; seconded by Peter S Galbraith, Peter Makholm and Josip Rodin. * "Since there is interest in packaging census data, maps, genome data and other huge datasets I and since most people agreed that dropping them in main or contrib is not a great idea, I propose the creation of a data section to reside along side of main, contrib and non-free." Includes rules about what goes in this section. Amendments Additions to virtual package list (#53756) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Joey Hess, Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Adds several X-related virtual packages, and corrects a piece of terminology. Policy for "x-terminal-emulator" virtual package and alternative (#53757) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Branden notes this documents existing practice. Policy for "x-window-manager" virtual package and alternative (#53758) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Joey Hess, Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Registers window managers with the alternatives system. Revision of X application-defaults policy (#53760) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Rewords the section on app-defaults files. Revision of the Motif/LessTif policy (#53761) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Rewords the motif section of policy. Applying the FHS to packages that use X (#53762) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Proposes that /usr/X11/{bin,man} not be used by normal packages that use X, instead they should use /usr/{bin,share/man}. Other similar changes for other directories under /usr/X11R6. Some exceptions are listed, the general aim is to minimize the number of files in /usr/X11R6. Policy for X font packages (#53763) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Adds text to policy to state what packages that contain X fonts should do. Documents existing practice. Policy for usage of "xserver" alternative (#53755) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Raul Miller and Randolph Chung. * Adds text stating which packages should provide the virtual package "xserver". Clarify meaning of Essential: yes (#50832) * Stalled. * Proposed by Anthony Towns; seconded by Raul Miller and Joel Klecker. * Adds text to require that essential packages must function correctly even while unconfigured. ( Do we have a consensus on this one? ) Amend non-free definition (#46522) * Stalled. * Proposed by Raul Miller; seconded by Marco d'Itri, Joseph Carter and Joel Klecker. * Change definition of non-free to "contains packages which are not compliant with the DFSG". Currently, non-free includes packages with patent problems or other legal issues. Config files must have manpages (#45406) * Stalled. * Proposed by Nicolás Lichtmaier; seconded by Oliver Elphick and Josip Rodin. * Require every config file have a man page. Changing policy on compiling with -g .. a better way (#43787) * Stalled. * Proposed by Ben Collins; seconded by Sean 'Shaleh' Perry, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Mike Goldman, Zephaniah E. Hull, Roman Hodek, Marcus Brinkmann, Aaron Van Couwenberg and Joseph Carter. * Instead of always requiring packages build with -g (only to strip it later), the proposal is that they may optionally only build with -g if the user specifies they do so (by setting DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=debug). This should reduce overhead in normal build circumstances. A proposal for README.Debian (#42554) * Stalled. * Proposed by Stephane Bortzmeyer; seconded by Anthony Towns and Richard Braakman. * Policy doesn't talk about README.Debian right now. This is an addition to policy that says what should be in the file. It says it should include descriptions of changes made to the upstream source, what options were enabled in configure and make, and the packages needed to build the package. (Do we have a consensus here?) Debian-policy has an unclear statement on dependancies and priorities (#39398) * Stalled. * Proposed by Chris Fearnley; seconded by Joey Hess and Joseph Carter. * A clarification to wording about package priorities. No real meaning seems to be changed by this proposal. (Do we have a consensus here?) Get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks (#39830) * Stalled. * Proposed on 20 Jun 1999 by Roland Rosenfeld; seconded by Chris Waters, Chris Lawrence and Raul Miller. * All programs are still required to provide manpages, but undocumented.7 is done away with by this proposal. Permit/require use of bz2 for source packages (#39299) * Stalled. * Proposed on 10 Jun 1999 by Chris Lawrence; seconded by Goswin Brederlow and Josip Rodin. * "I propose that we permit the use of bzip2 to compress source package files (.orig.tar and .diff for most packages, .tar for native packages). I further propose that the use of bzip2 be mandatory for newly uploaded source files, and that any existing source packages in the archive in gzip format exceeding 5 MB of compressed space be converted upon the freeze for potato." ( The reason this was proposed is because we're almost overflowing the second source CD already. This is a very contentious proposal. ) Active proposals Emacs/tex downgrading to optional (#53849) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Robert Woodcock; seconded by Joseph Carter. * Proposes to downgrade several packages to optional, to reduce the size of standard. Revision of the "to build with X support or not" policy (#53759) * Under discussion. * Proposed by Branden Robinson; seconded by Randolph Chung. * Previously, policy said that if a package could be built with X support, it should be. This proposal weakens that by offering a loophole: if a package is of standard or higher priority, X-specific binaries may be split out of it into a separate package or an alternate version of the package with X support may be provided. Stalled proposals Change package relations policy to remove references to non-free from main (#51473) * Stalled. * Proposed by Wichert Akkerman. * Instead of packages in main suggesting packages in non-free, proposes an Enhances tag that the non-free packages can use. Package may be maintained by a group (#51879) * Stalled. * Proposed by Joey Hess; seconded by Branden Robinson. * Policy currently doesn't allow more than one person to maintain a package, the proposal is to change that to be more inline with current practice. Echo -n (#48247) * Stalled. * Proposed by Raul Miller; seconded by Joseph Carter. * Amend policy to say /bin/sh must be a POSIX shell, but with the addition that "echo -n" must not generate a newline. Split /cgi-bin/ into system and local parts (#32263) * Stalled. * Proposed by Brian White. * Use /cgi-lib/ for scripts in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/, leaving /cgi-bin/ for the administrator. Section 3.2 should not allow static user ids (except root=0) (#43483) * Stalled. * Proposed by Andreas Jellinghaus; seconded by Joseph Carter. * Policy currently allows for static uid' to be hardcoded into daemons. The proposal is to change that so only dynamic uid's may be used. Directories for local initialization scripts * Stalled. * Proposed by Julio. * Add a directory /etc/init.d/local for locally installed init scripts, which can be handled by update-rc.d like the scripts in /etc/init.d. Also allow for ~/.rc.d directories. Editor and sensible-editor * Stalled. * Proposed on 2 Jun 1999 by Goswin Brederlow; seconded by Joseph Carter. * Instead of having programs use $EDITOR and fall back to editor, just use sensible-editor. Old proposals Remove the incompatibility argument from 5.1 (#43077) * Old. * Proposed by Matthias Klose. * The proposal is to get rid of the part of policy (5.1) that mandates the format of architecture specification strings a program must use. Test suite proposal (#41902) * Old. * Proposed by Ian Jackson. * This proposal deals with regression tests for packages. The idea is to make a separate package_version.tests.tar.gz file that contains regression tests. It details what should be in this file and how it works. Naming Conventions for modules (#41113) * Old. * Proposed by Alexander Reelsen. * perl modules are named libfoo-perl; python modules are named python-foo. It's not consitent. This proposal is that we come up with a general naming scheme for all language modules that is consistant accross languages. A better way to configure debian systems (#38703) * Old. * Proposed on 1 Jun 1999 by Goswin Brederlow; seconded by Falk Hueffner. * Another configuration management proposal. A pre-install required space checking mechanism for Debian packages (#37999) * Old. * Proposed on 19 May 1999 by Manoj Srivastava. * The idea is to enable tools like apt to check if a set of packages will fit on a disk, taking various partitions into account. This will require adding something like the output of du to the package or to the Packages file or to a new file that can be downloaded. The details are still being hashed out. _________________________________________________________________ Last modified: Mon Jan 3 17:51:01 2000 -- see shy jo
