Source: debian-policy Version: 4.6.1 Severity: minor Tags: patch Hello.
The fourth paragraph of section 7.1 says: The relations allowed are <<... for ... , respectively. The exception is the Provides field, for which only = is allowed. [footnote] [footnote]: The relations < and > were previously allowed... I see three problems in this paragraph: * The second sentence lies, as Built-Using introduces another exception. * An explicit list of exceptions in the section header is hard to keep accurate, and not useful, at least inside the policy. * The footnote actually concerns the previous sentence. I suggest to remove the second sentence, and instead be explicit in the description of the Provides field. --- a/policy/ch-relationships.rst +++ b/policy/ch-relationships.rst @@ -25,8 +25,7 @@ The relations allowed are ``<<``, ``<=``, ``=``, ``>=`` and ``>>`` for strictly earlier, earlier or equal, exactly equal, later or equal and -strictly later, respectively. The exception is the Provides field, for -which only ``=`` is allowed. [#]_ +strictly later, respectively. [#]_ Whitespace may appear at any point in the version specification subject to the rules in :ref:`s-controlsyntax`, and must appear @@ -447,7 +446,9 @@ they can say: and the ``bar-plus`` package will now also satisfy the dependency for the ``foo`` package. -A ``Provides`` field may contain version numbers, and such a version number +A ``Provides`` field may contain version numbers, +but only with the "exactly equal" ("=") relation. +Such a version number will be considered when considering a dependency on or conflict with the virtual package name. For example, given the following packages: