On Sun, 25 Jun 2017 at 14:43:36 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Here is an updated version of the patch from earlier in this (now very > long) thread for discussion. I still think this is consistent with > previous practice and reasonable documentation of what we're currently > doing. > > diff --git a/policy.xml b/policy.xml > index 7ba5fc0..daf4c3c 100644 > --- a/policy.xml > +++ b/policy.xml > @@ -595,7 +595,9 @@ > <literal>Build-Depends</literal>, > <literal>Build-Depends-Indep</literal>, or > <literal>Build-Depends-Arch</literal> relationship on a > - non-<emphasis>main</emphasis> package), > + non-<emphasis>main</emphasis> package) unless that package > + is only listed as a non-default alternative for a package in > + <emphasis>main</emphasis>, > </para> > </listitem> > <listitem> > > If we still can't reach consensus on this, we should probably bump it to > the Technical Committee for resolution so that this doesn't just sit > around unresolved forever. (I feel like that happened at some point in > the past, but it's been so long that my memory is very hazy.)
A TC resolution in 2014 said that "Depends: package-in-main | package-in-non-free" is acceptable for main, and not a Policy §2.2.1 violation. What you're doing here is editing Policy §2.2.1 to make the 2014 TC's interpretation more obviously the correct one. References: <http://bugs.debian.org/681419>, <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/10/msg00007.html> This is certainly not unanimous (the TC vote in 2014 wasn't unanimous either); but I think there's rough consensus, it matches current practice, and it's better for Policy to be clear and specific as a self-contained document, rather than leaving ambiguity in place and requiring past TC decisions to be consulted for disambiguation. So I second this patch. Regards, S
