Le Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 07:32:47AM +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit : > On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 02:02:43PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: > > While working on the machine-readable format for Debian copyright files, I > > realised that there are several good reasons to not use the same format as > > for > > Debian control files (which actually does not comply with RFC822). > > What exactly are the reasons that it is not RFC822 compliant? I did not > dived into this into very detail, but I'm curious because we are using > this format in the tasks files and I'm using a Python RFC822 library to > parse them.
RFC822 specifies newlines as CR/LF, while in Debian control files we use only LF. Also, in RFC822 all fields are foldable, while in Debian control files they are not unless specified otherwise. Lastly, not all features of RFC822 are accepted in Debian control files, and some conventions of Debian control files are absent of RFC822, like the preeminence of the first line in some field bodies, the concept of stanza and the special role for the first of them, and the use of lines containing only spaces to end the machine-readable section. All in all, I think that alhtough many RFC822 parsers work, we can not explain to a newcommer what Debian control files are by just pointing them at the RFC822. Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Debian Med packaging team, http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-med-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org