Manoj Srivastava wrote: > This seems like a good practice kind of recommendation, not an > requirement, and as such, may be better suited to be included > in developers reference rather than policy, don't you think?
I agree that policy can't force developers to do that, but policy is already full of such recommendatons: 1. You should not specify a `Pre-Depends' entry for a package before this has been discussed on the `debian-devel' mailing list and a consensus about doing that has been reached. 2. You must not tag any packages `essential' before this has been discussed on the `debian-devel' mailing list and a consensus about doing that has been reached. 3. You should not tag any packages as belonging to a task before this has been discussed on the _debian-devel_ mailing list and a consensus about doing that has been reached. 4. This will use a default sequence number of 20. If it does not matter when or in which order the `init.d' script is run, use this default. If it does, then you should talk to the maintainer of the `sysvinit' package or post to `debian-devel', and they will help you choose a number. 5. If this case happens, one of the programs must be renamed. The maintainers should report this to the `debian-devel' mailing list and try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached, _both_ programs must be renamed. 6. (on perms and users) If necessary you may deviate from the details below. However, if you do so you must make sure that what is done is secure and you should try to be as consistent as possible with the rest of the system. You should probably also discuss it on `debian-devel' first. 7. In this case you should choose an appropriate user or group name, discussing this on `debian-devel' and checking with the `base-passwd' maintainer that it is unique and that they do not wish you to use a statically allocated id instead. 8. It is often worthwhile contacting such authors diplomatically to ask them to modify their license terms. However, this can be a politically difficult thing to do and you should ask for advice on the `debian-legal' mailing list first, as explained below. 9. When in doubt about a copyright, send mail to <debian-legal@lists.debian.org>. Be prepared to provide us with the copyright statement. Do you plan to move all these to the developer's reference? It would bloat the developer's reference with references to specific sections of policy, and leave the policy full of holes with no recommendations as to a good course of action or even a mention that a given action is potentially hazardous. I remember having this exact same discussion when #3 above was added to policy, BTW. -- see shy jo
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