On Tue, 31 Mar 2009, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Mon, 30 Mar 2009, Russ Allbery wrote: > > Nils Rennebarth <[email protected]> writes: > > > > > Usually, unknown fields are iggnored by the debian packaging system. To > > > avoid conflicts of user defined fields with field that may be used by > > > debian in the future, we suggest to use field names starting with X- (so > > > you need to put X[BCS]-X-foo into the control file) which are guaranteed > > > to never conflict with future official fields. > > > > Is this because the X in front of [BCS] is stripped off when the field is > > copied into the resulting binary or source package? > > Yes.
Is there any reason why we can't transition official X-* headers to real * headers as they become widely used (and when they're inshrined in policy)? Some transition period would be necessary, and dpkg-gencontrol could be patched to automatically rename the X-* headers to * for the transition period (and tools that use the header should look at both X-* and * headers[0]). We really don't have the issue of email, because we have a relatively consistent set of tools that actually generate control (for non-Manoj developers anyway[1]). Don Armstrong 0: I submit that tools that examine the headers should let the * header override the X-* header when they're being written, unless there's some extraordinary reason not to do so. 1: Manoj may even use dpkg-gencontrol now... -- Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it. -- Richard Feynman http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
