On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 06:36:15PM +0100, Michael Fladischer wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi, > > I'm maintaining sphinx-issuetracker and during the build of the package > it also generates HTML documentation. To resolve references to > documentation from other packages the documentation-build-system > (sphinx) uses files that are included in those other packages (named > objects.inv). Those files reside under /usr/share/doc/<package> and I > would like to set those packages as Build-Depends so the objects.inv are > available and the references can be resolved. Is this feasible or does > this violate Policy 12.3? > > ''' > Packages must not require the existence of any files in /usr/share/doc/ > in order to function [The system administrator should be able to delete > files in /usr/share/doc/ without causing any programs to break.]. > '''
I would consider that this violates Policy 12.3: for example, apt-get source --build sphinx-issuetracker would fail on such system. > There is no reference on what can be assumed during package build. > Should I refrain from using these files? The impact from not using this > files would be no/fewer links in the documentation. This is a false dilemma. What you should do instead is to move theses files to /usr/share/<pkg>/<something> and change the documentation-build-system to look for the objects.inv files there. If users expect the files to be /usr/share/doc/<package>, add symlinks. Cheers, Bill. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110301221537.GA14745@yellowpig
