On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Neil Spring wrote:
> > However I've found a number of packages which use a long
> > description which is more or less the _same_ as the short
> > description.
>
> This is just a thought, but perhaps the control file could
> incorporate a mechanism for common description of packages
> from the same source. For example, NetCDF has a fine
> description for the main package, but lousy, redundant ones
> for sub-packages, such as netcdfg-dev:
>
> Development kit for NetCDF.
>
> Includes headers, static libraries, and documentation.
>
> The maintainer has often already put time into making a good
> description for the main package, and it would be lovely if
> that description could also appear in sub-packages with
> little effort and without copy-and-paste.
>
> Thanks for your efforts to improve descriptions!
Use ${description}, and debian/substvars. This is already supported. RTFM.
