Quoting Niels Thykier (2018-01-02 12:19:00) > Jonas Smedegaard: > > Quoting Niels Thykier (2018-01-02 09:23:00) > >> Andrey Rahmatullin: > >>> On Mon, Jan 01, 2018 at 08:40:38PM +0100, Jérémy Lal wrote: > >>>> wouldn't it be simpler to couple debhelper dependency to > >>>> Standards-Version ? > >>> There are packages which may break with newer debhelper, but can be > >>> easily updated to the current policy. > >>> > >> > >> Also, there are packages that deliberately hold back on adopting new > >> debhelper compat levels because they want to be backportable as-is to > >> stable (even up to oldoldstable in some cases). > >> > >> That said, I do agree that a maintainer should have to care about > >> fewer turning wheels in debian/control than what our current packaging > >> design requires us to do. > > > > Maybe extend debhelper to support compat file content of "latest". Or > > simply treat a missing compat file as implicitly meaning "latest". > > > > > > - Jonas > > > > I have considered it, but it will effectively lead to a situation where > I cannot ever make a new compat level. > > The point of compat levels is to change behaviour in an incompatible > way. Because it is opt-in, a new compat level breaks 0 packages (except > a handful of early adopters). Whereas if I implement a named "latest" > compat level, then I possibly break every single package with that named > compat level. > As more and more adopt it, the compat bump will break more and more > packages leading to a situation where it is nearly impossible for me to > implement an actual compat bump.
Breakage will not burden development of debhelper if you a) document clearly (perhaps even spew a warning at runtime) that no promise is made about stability when not using a fixed compatibility level, and b) you do not introduce a new compatibility level late in the release cycle. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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