XPost: linux.debian.policy
I came across this while dealing with #1107137 / #1007717.
My answer to the headline question is "no".
In answer to the subsidiary questions:
The basename of the installed changelog name
Humans don't need a machine-readable method of knowing the answer and
won't be looking at the version number of the containing binary
package.
Computers can use a much simpler algorithm: the Debian changelog is in "changelog.Debian" if it exists and "changelog" otherwise. I presume
this is what tooling does already.
Therefore I don't think policy needs to demand that the Debian
changelog installation path depends on the binary version number.
Usually it will make semantic sense to use the source version number.
After all, the changelog is a source changelog, and whether there is a
distinct upstream is a property of the way we organise the
development, not a property of how the binary package is made.
But I don't think it matters if some package does this differently for
some reason.
The remark in chapter 3 about date versioning for native packages is misplaced
Yes. Indeed I think *all* the discussion of version numbers in that
chapter is misplaced. As things are currently structured, that
material ought to be in the description of the Version control field.
But, there's a *lot* of stuff about version numbering. Perhaps it
would be better to put it all in its own chapter and leave the
`Version:` element as a stub which refers to that chapter.
Can a non-native source package produce binaries without a hyphen
IMO, yes. This should be allowed, and also the converse should be
allowed. We already allowe binary version numbers to diverge from the
source version number. I'm not sure why there would be a rule of this
kind.
If we move the stuff about version numbers to where it belongs, then
policy will be silent on all of these questions, and all the existing
(working) practices are implicitly legitimised.
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <
ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk,
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