Re: Bug#1067079: Clarify that policy on a technology does not implicitly mandate that technology

Sean Whitton wrote: > On Tue 26 Mar 2024 at 10:11am -06, Sam Hartman wrote: > > I tend to agree with Sean that your rationale is not convincing. > > It sounds like you want to use policy as a stick to hit people > > over the head and say "policy is not a stick." > > This was basically my concern.

Bug#1067079: Clarify that policy on a technology does not implicitly mandate that technology

On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 12:08:10PM +0800, Sean Whitton wrote: > Thanks. For the time being, I myself am not convinced. Policy is not a > stick to beat maintainers with, as we say, but I'm not sure that idea is > one that ought to be in Policy itself. Having observed many attempts to use Policy

Bug#1067079: Clarify that policy on a technology does not implicitly mandate that technology

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 05:38:15PM +0800, Sean Whitton wrote: > Was there some recent packaging situation that prompted you to think > about this? I'm cautious about adding it in the absence of that. Mostly, recent discussions in various places regarding whether packages are required to use

Bug#1067079: Clarify that policy on a technology does not implicitly mandate that technology

Package: debian-policy Version: 4.6.2.1 Severity: normal Tags: patch X-Debbugs-Cc: j...@joshtriplett.org This proposal adds a paragraph to Policy to explicitly state that having policy about *how* to use a particular technology or mechanism is not necessarily policy *requiring* the use of that

Re: Bug#945269: debian-policy: packages should use tmpfiles.d(5) to create directories below /var

Sean Whitton wrote: > On Sun 17 Sep 2023 at 10:52am -07, Russ Allbery wrote: > > So far as I can tell, the only important part is that the directory > > be registered in tmpfiles.d (or a service unit) so that it can be > > recreated when needed. > > Something which I don't think has been mentioned

Bug#567033: Decide if we should continue recommending /usr/games

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 07:11:30PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > Games are often written for performance more than correctness, and > frequently do non-ideal things or have unfixed security issues. If we > separate them into /usr/games and avoid putting that directory in root's > PATH, then tab

Bug#954794: New packages must not declare themselves Essential

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 11:56:19AM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > Javier Serrano Polo wrote: > > On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 18:34:06 -0700 Jonathan Nieder > > wrote: > > >> Even so, some *rough* consensus on the plan is very useful for > >> helping people evaluate that first step. > > > > Here is a

Bug#954794: New packages must not declare themselves Essential

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 05:23:38PM -0700, jrnie...@gmail.com wrote: > Hi, > > Josh Triplett wrote: > > > Over the years, "Essential" has made it difficult to reduce installation > > size, to reduce chroot/container size, or to coordinate various > &

Bug#954794: New packages must not declare themselves Essential

On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 05:15:45PM +0200, Javier Serrano Polo wrote: > On Mon, 23 Mar 2020 08:00:04 -0700 Josh Triplett > wrote: > > This change does not propose eliminating the concept of Essential, > > What is the point of Essential? To omit declaring dependencies on the

Bug#954794: New packages must not declare themselves Essential

a.debian.org/josh-guest/policy/ on the branch no-new-essential. - Josh Triplett >From a4b263709ed183e8b353c669e0e56e225ef8c818 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 Message-Id: From: Josh Triplett Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2020 07:11:27 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] New packages must not declare themselves Essential Ove

Re: RFC: No new Essential packages?

an help it and instead asking > > people to just declare explicit dependencies. > > In this case, it doesn't seem like we'd need any new normative wording > in Policy -- I think Ansgar is right that the current text ensures that > we're not adding any new functionality to the es

Re: RFC: No new Essential packages?

Russ Allbery wrote: > I think Josh is arguing that ideally we'd slowly move towards declaring > dependencies on essential packages explicitly, so we should indicate that > in Policy and, as a first step, say that we're not adding any entirely new > functionality to the essential set if we can help

RFC: No new Essential packages?

an exception for all existing Essential packages, as well as for new packages introduced to transition from existing Essential packages. (This policy shouldn't, for instance, prevent Essential packages from splitting or combining.) Does this seem reasonable? - Josh Triplett

Bug#941198: initscripts: packages should ship systemd units

On Sun, 29 Sep 2019 12:03:11 +0200 Bill Allombert wrote: > On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 06:02:52PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > Sean Whitton writes: > > > > > I don't currently have any reason to doubt we have a project consensus > > > that systemd unit files should be included in packages in

Re: Ch.10.2 Libraries - shared lib compilation - -fPIC

Russ Allbery wrote: > Andrey Rahmatullin writes: > > Text relocations are forbidden at least on amd64 though. > > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7865059/why-does-gcc-force-pic-for-x64-shared-libs > > Yeah, but I believe not on i386. > > This is really a very 32-bit, x86-specific problem.

Bug#920692: [PATCH] Packages must not install files or directories into /var/cache

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 08:13:52AM +0100, Ansgar wrote: > Josh Triplett writes: > > diff --git a/policy/ch-files.rst b/policy/ch-files.rst > > index 48410be..1cdcb18 100644 > > --- a/policy/ch-files.rst > > +++ b/policy/ch-files.rst > > @@ -722,6 +722,15 @@ The

Unifying logging by default

configure most applications for this default, we could introduce this into policy as a "should", but for now I'm seeking interest in slowly adapting applications to shift defaults to unified logging. - Josh Triplett

Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or directories into /var/cache

On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 01:18:53PM +, Ian Jackson wrote: > Josh Triplett writes ("Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or > directories into /var/cache"): > > It's well-established in Debian (but not documented in Policy) that > > packages must not instal

Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or directories into /var/cache

On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 01:20:31PM +, Ian Jackson wrote: > Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or > directories into /var/cache"): > > Josh Triplett writes ("Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or > > directories i

Bug#920692: Packages must not install files or directories into /var/cache

4f6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Josh Triplett Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 11:39:10 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Packages must not install files or directories into /var/cache --- policy/ch-files.rst | 9 + 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+) diff --git a/policy/ch-files.rst b/policy/ch-files.

Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to build-essential

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 10:09:17AM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > On Wed 17 Oct 2018 at 01:47AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > > Which is a good argument for them not being in /etc. > > Do we need to block this Policy change on moving these files out of > /etc? No, certainly not

Bug#910548: base-files - please consider adding /usr/share/common-licenses/Unicode-Data

On Sun, 7 Oct 2018 16:25:39 -0700 Paul Hardy wrote: > Package: base-files > Severity: wishlist > Tags: patch > > Hello, > > I recently formatted the Unicode Data license for the d/copyright file > of a Debian package that I created. I thought I would offer it to > Debian if you are interested.

Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to build-essential

On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 08:48:54 +0200 Ansgar Burchardt wrote: > Josh Triplett writes: > > Which effectively means the admin should never delete any existing entry > > in the file, only add their own. > > It's a configuration file that is not supposed to ever be changed.

Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to build-essential

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 12:01:35AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > Josh Triplett writes ("Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to > build-essential"): > > On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 13:39:32 +0100 Ian Jackson > > wrote: > > > My proposed wording about "

Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to build-essential

On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 13:39:32 +0100 Ian Jackson wrote: > Bill Allombert writes ("Bug#904248: Beginnings of a patch to add netbase to > build-essential"): > > What about the fact that these files are conffiles ? > > What about it ? > > My proposed wording about "longstanding and conventionally

Bug#905401: permit access to apt repositories during builds

On Sat, 4 Aug 2018 06:06:22 +0100 Ian Jackson wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Version: 4.2.0.1 > Tags: patch > > Apropos of discussion in #813471: > > Paul writes: > > In addition, d-i relies on access to the apt repo for the system. > > I can imagine other uses of that, so I added a

Bug#880920: Document Rules-Requires-Root field

On Fri, 29 Dec 2017 11:29:00 + Niels Thykier wrote: > Here is an initial draft for how I think it could look. > > Review welcome. [...] > +The `gain root command` is passed to the build script via the > +``DPKG_GAIN_ROOT_CMD`` environment variable. It is space separated

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 09:37:32PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > This is okay 80% of the time and badly needs manual editing the remaining > 20% of the time. I personally would never be willing to forgo good > changelogs in that remaining 20% of the time that can't really be handled > with commit

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

mply arguing that they make it a pain to keep a Debian package in git, and that we ought to autogenerate them from git log and some care taken in commit messages. - Josh Triplett

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 06:56:53PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > Josh Triplett wrote: > > On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:04:20 +0100 Bill Allombert <ballo...@debian.org> > > wrote: > > >> The fact that some upstream do not bother to ship useful changelog does

Bug#459427: changelog vs. NEWS handling

use it incurs all the same pain. Now, a NEWS file or similar, containing user-visible *release notes* and similar highlights, would most certainly be useful. I would love to see *more* upstreams providing files like those. But those certainly aren't changelogs. - Josh Triplett

Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by stuff in main

Ian Jackson wrote: > If there is a core implementation needed (eg a library which parses a > standard config location or soemthing), I expect to to write it. I sincerely hope we can avoid needing to develop some new infrastructure or library here, since any such mechanism would almost certainly

Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by stuff in main

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 06:54:32PM +, Ian Jackson wrote: > Josh Triplett writes ("Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by > stuff in main"): > > - Packages in main must not point the user to specific non-free or > > contrib software and recommend it

Re: Automatic downloading of non-free software by stuff in main

Ian Jackson wrote: > Over the years, d-legal has discussed a number of packages which > automatically download non-free software, under some circumstances. > > The obvious example is web browsers with extension repositories > containing both free and non-free software. > > We have also recently

Bug#770440: debian-policy: policy should mention systemd timers

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:30:13 +0100 Alexandre Detiste wrote: > The policy should mention how to handle systemd native timers > to avoid these kind of bugs in the future; > when other packages will start shipping native timers. > > Here is the spirit of this change: >

Bug#601455: Steps towards a patch to document disabling a daemon upon installation

On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 14:41:12 +0100 Ian Jackson wrote: > Sean Whitton writes ("Steps towards a patch to document disabling a daemon > upon installation"): > > [draft policy text] > > > +The default behaviour is to enable autostarting your package's daemon. > > >

Bug#874206: debian-policy: allow a trailing comma in package relationship fields

On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 10:03:47 +0200 Mattia Rizzolo wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Version: 3.9.8 > > I use the `wrap-and-sort` tool to keep my list of dependencies neatly > sorted and wrapped. In particular, I use the `-t` flag to have a > trailing comma at the end of the

Bug#567033: Decide if we should continue recommending /usr/games

On Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:31:09 +0200 Axel Beckert wrote: > Sean Whitton wrote: > > The latest version of the FHS does not have /usr/games, so merging this > > with the bug about updating our FHS version. > > Meh. > > From my point of view we should continue to keep /usr/games/

Bug#867308: debian-policy: please add "javascript" as a valid value for the Section field

On Wed, 05 Jul 2017 18:05:01 +0200 Johannes Schauer wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Version: 3.9.8.0 > Severity: wishlist > > According to https://packages.debian.org/unstable/ there exists the > section "javascript" filled with 1050 packages. But the "javascript" > section

Bug#835520: [PATCH 02/11] Update init-system title to be more agnostic

On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 15:07:13 +0100 Andreas Henriksson wrote: > Get rid of "script" as that doesn't properly describe the equivalent for > systems using declarative replacements. > > Also drop "the" as via update-rc.d you're potentially/likely interfacing > with multiple ones at

Bug#845715: debian-policy: Please document that packages are not allowed to write outside their source directories

gt; + the use of /tmp which is permitted as long as temporary Instead of hardcoding /tmp, this should recommend using $TMPDIR, with fallback to /tmp if and only if $TMPDIR not set. - Josh Triplett

Bug#845576: Please add a section for Rust packages

crates for the Rust programming language Thanks, Josh Triplett

Bug#838777: Policy 11.8.4 for x-window-manager needs update for freedesktop menus

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 12:57:04PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> writes: > > > Based on some conversations on #debian-devel on the purpose of > > x-window-manager (as launched by > > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50x11-common_det

Bug#838777: Policy 11.8.4 for x-window-manager needs update for freedesktop menus

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 11:44:25AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: > Package: debian-policy > Severity: normal > > Policy 11.8.4 documents how to set the priority for an x-window-manager > alternative. The algorithm for doing so increases the priority for > window managers supporti

Bug#838777: Policy 11.8.4 for x-window-manager needs update for freedesktop menus

Package: debian-policy Severity: normal Policy 11.8.4 documents how to set the priority for an x-window-manager alternative. The algorithm for doing so increases the priority for window managers supporting the Debian menu system, but doesn't say anything about the freedesktop menu system. (And,

Bug#823348: Limit the strongest dependencies on supplemental -doc packages

[Please CC me on replies, as I didn't receive this mail, and just happened to see it in the archives.] On Mon, 22 Aug 2016 13:38:42 +0100 George Bateman wrote: > I'm currently making my first package, Processing. It's a GUI teaching > tool for (usually Java)

Bug#833709: Please add the MIT/Expat license to common-licenses

On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 06:37:41PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> writes: > > On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 11:53:37AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > >> I don't think this is a good idea. This license is extremely short, > >> and

Bug#833709: Please add the MIT/Expat license to common-licenses

On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 05:10:52PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > On Sun, 07 Aug 2016 at 21:00:12 -1000, Josh Triplett wrote: > > Numerous packages use the MIT/Expat license, and currently all of those > > packages need to include it in their copyright files. > > Although P

Bug#833709: Please add the MIT/Expat license to common-licenses

On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 11:53:37AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Josh Triplett <j...@joshtriplett.org> writes: > > > Numerous packages use the MIT/Expat license, and currently all of those > > packages need to include it in their copyright files. I'd love to see > &

Re: Time to reevaluate the cost of -fPIC?

On Wed, May 04, 2016 at 12:41:25AM +0200, Matthias Klose wrote: > On 03.05.2016 22:50, Josh Triplett wrote: > > Debian Policy requires the use of -fPIC for shared libraries, but > > documents potential exceptions for libraries with position-dependent > > assembly, and for

Time to reevaluate the cost of -fPIC?

last stable release, I think we may want to reevaluate the conventional wisdom. Perhaps this information might help support the current iteration of any proposals to adopt more hardening flags by default, for instance. - Josh Triplett

Bug#823348: Limit the strongest dependencies on supplemental -doc packages

intainer's discretion how much the prospective user of a package will want the corresponding -doc package. - Josh Triplett -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.5.0-1-am

Bug#690495: Prohibit click-through licenses or disclaimers

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 08:17:05PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Josh Triplett j...@joshtriplett.org writes: I don't intend this as a slippery slope; I very specifically want to cover the types of annoyances mentioned in the above paragraph, which almost no software in Debian actually includes

Bug#690495: Prohibit click-through licenses or disclaimers

forcing the user to agree to the additional license, but I'm not sure we've ever discussed that in general. That thought crossed my mind as well, but I think it makes sense to proscribe the practice by Policy whether it triggers a DFSG issue or not. - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email

Bug#690495: Prohibit click-through licenses or disclaimers

, because I know of one package that already does this, and I don't intend for this change to make any package immediately rc-buggy. The one package I know of that does this, Transmission, I've already filed a bug on (bug 689095). - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ

Bug#690495: Bug#689095: [debian-policy] Prohibit click-through licenses or disclaimers

, which will launch Transmission and immediately pop up the dialog to start a torrent; once the user starts that torrent, the disclaimer wouldn't display. However, what about a disclaimer sitting below the last torrent, always at the bottom of the list? - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email

Bug#455602: debian-policy: Examples of dpkg frontends should mention apt now

a better example here. In any case, dselect now by no means represents the most popular dpkg frontend. - Josh Triplett -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-rc1