On la, 2010-08-14 at 10:16 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Proliferation of file formats is a bug, not a feature, when you're trying > to make things readable by software.
Indeed. > I believe most of these issues are already addressed by referring to the > syntax description in Policy with the exception of: Right. It is my understanding that the rough consensus is in favor of using the same syntax as for Debian control files in general (with Charles perhaps the only dissenting voice), so I propose the following attached patch to replace the "Compatibility and Human-Readability" section with a new short section referencing policy 5.1. (The existing section is giving requirements for the syntax of the file, such as human-readability, which was appropriate at the beginning of the development of the spec, but I think we don't need that in the spec anymore.) Does anyone oppose this?
=== modified file 'dep5.mdwn' --- dep5.mdwn 2010-08-13 05:09:06 +0000 +++ dep5.mdwn 2010-08-14 18:39:15 +0000 @@ -54,17 +54,12 @@ they have a problem with, even if the licenses are DFSG-free. For example, the Affero GPL. -# Compatibility and Human-Readability -The file must be encoded as UTF-8 and strictly formatted as a superset -of RFC2822 including significant newlines. Free-form text is not -allowed. - -The `debian/copyright` file must be machine-interpretable, yet -human-readable, while communicating all mandated upstream information, -copyright notices and licensing details. - -For the sake of human-readability this proposal avoids any complex field -names or syntax rules. +# File syntax + +The syntax of the file is the same as for other Debian control files, +as specified in section 5.1 of the Debian Policy Manual. +See <http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-controlsyntax> +for details. # Implementation ## Sections