Debian Bug report logs - #944296
debian-policy: Source provenance requirement is WET

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Package: debian-policy; Maintainer for debian-policy is Debian Policy Editors <[email protected]>; Source for debian-policy is src:debian-policy (PTS, buildd, popcon).

Reported by: Guillem Jover <[email protected]>

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 12:18:02 UTC

Severity: wishlist

Found in version debian-policy/4.4.1.1

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Subject: Bug#944296: debian-policy: Source provenance requirement is WET
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Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2019 13:16:30 +0100
From: Guillem Jover <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
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Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.4.1.1
Severity: wishlist

Hi!

We currently require (with a must) in section §12.5, to add to the
debian/copyright, where the upstream source was obtained from:

  ,---
  In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream sources
  (if any) were obtained, …
  `---

This means that when using a debian/watch file one has to duplicate
the information in two places, with the possibility of this getting
out-of-sync, etc.

In addition the machine readable debian/copyright format, specifies
the Source field as optional, which could perhaps be interpreted as
contradict what policy says.

IMO, ideally the requirement in policy would be lifted by clarifying
that the information should be provided in *either* debian/copyright
or debian/watch.

The other option would be, I guess, to turn the Source field into a
required one. If that's not desired to be done from the
copyright-format itself (because the format can be considered more
general and there's no need for this requirement from the parsing PoV)
then this requirement could perhaps be added from the policy side.

I just noticed recently I've been creating non-compliant packages for
a while. :/ Once there's a decision either way we could add lintian
tags so that we do not miss this kind of problem.

Thanks,
Guillem

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