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8 <a accesskey="h" href="http://www.debian.org/"> UP </a>
10 <a accesskey="H" href="http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Policy"> HOME </a>
13 <title>Debian Policy</title>
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126 <h1 class="title">Debian Policy</h1>
129 <div id="outline-container-1" class="outline-2">
130 <h2 id="sec-1">Infrastructure </h2>
131 <div class="outline-text-2" id="text-1">
136 Website:: <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy">http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy</a>
139 Mailing list:: debian-policy@lists.debian.org lists
145 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
148 Browser: <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git">http://git.debian.org/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git</a>
153 Unix group:: dbnpolicy
156 Alioth Project:: <a href="http://alioth.debian.org/projects/dbnpolicy">http://alioth.debian.org/projects/dbnpolicy</a> (exists
157 to manage the repository but not otherwise used)
164 <div id="outline-container-1.1" class="outline-3">
165 <h3 id="sec-1.1">Interacting with the team </h3>
166 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-1.1">
171 Email contact:: <a href="mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org">mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org</a>
174 Request tracker:: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy">http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy</a>
179 <p>Debian Policy uses a formal procedure and a set of user tags to manage
180 the lifecycle of change proposals. For definitions of those tags and
181 proposal states and information about what the next step is for each
182 phase, see PolicyChangesProcess.
185 Once the wording for a change has been finalized, please send a patch
186 against the current Git master branch to the bug report, if you're not
187 familiar with Git, the following commands are the basic process:
192 <pre class="src src-Sh">git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
193 git checkout -b <local-branch-name>
195 # edit files, but don't make changes to upgrading-checklist or debian/changelog
196 git add <files>
198 # repeat as necessary
200 # update your branch against the current master
204 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
205 : git checkout -b temp master; git merge <local-branch-name>
206 # If error, reset temp, merge master into local; else skip these three lines
207 : git reset --hard HEAD;
208 : git checkout <local-branch-name>;
210 # get rid of the temp branch:
213 # Checkout the local branch, to create the patch to send to the policy
214 git checkout <local-branch-name>
216 git format-patch -o $dir -s master
217 # check out the patches created in $dir
218 git send-email --from <span style="color: #ffc1c1;">"you <<a href="mailto:your@email">your@email</a>>"</span> \
219 --to debian-policy@lists.debian.org \
227 <local-branch-name> is some convenient name designating your local
228 changes. You may want to use some common prefix like local-. You can
229 use git format-patch and git send-email if you want, but usually it's
237 <div id="outline-container-2" class="outline-2">
238 <h2 id="sec-2">Usual Roles </h2>
239 <div class="outline-text-2" id="text-2">
243 The Debian Policy team are official project delegates (see the DPL
244 delegation). All of the Policy team members do basically the same
245 work: shepherd proposals, propose wording, and merge changes when
246 consensus has been reached. The current delegates are:
262 Colin Watson (cjwatson)
267 <p>The special tasks of Policy delegates are:
271 Commit access to the Git repository and uploads of the debian-policy
272 package itself, which makes them responsible for debian-policy as a
273 package in Debian and for making final decisions about when a new
274 version is released and what bits go into it.
277 Rejecting proposals. Anyone can argue against a proposal, but only
278 Policy delegates can formally reject it.
281 Counting seconds and weighing objections to proposals to determine
282 whether the proposal has sufficient support to be included.
287 <p>Everything else can be done by anyone, or any DD (depending on the
288 outcome of the discussion about seconding). We explicitly want any
289 Debian DD to review and second or object to proposals. The more
290 participation, the better. Many other people are active on the Policy
291 mailing list without being project delegates.
297 <div id="outline-container-3" class="outline-2">
298 <h2 id="sec-3">Task description </h2>
299 <div class="outline-text-2" id="text-3">
303 The Debian Policy team is responsible for maintaining and coordinating
304 updates to the technical Policy manuals for the project. The primary
305 output of the team is the Debian Policy Manual and the assorted
306 subpolicies, released as the debian-policy Debian package and also
307 published at <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/">http://www.debian.org/doc/</a>.
310 In addition to the main technical manual, the team currently also maintains:
314 <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/">Debian Menu sub-policy</a>
317 <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/perl-policy/">Debian Perl Policy</a>
320 <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/">Debian MIME support sub-policy</a>
323 <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/debconf_specification.html">Debconf Specification</a>
326 <a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt">Authoritative list of virtual package names </a>
331 <p>These documents are maintained using the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess">Policy changes process</a>, and
332 the current state of all change proposals is tracked using the
333 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy">debian-policy BTS</a>.
339 <div id="outline-container-4" class="outline-2">
340 <h2 id="sec-4">Get involved </h2>
341 <div class="outline-text-2" id="text-4">
345 The best way to help is to review the <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy">current open bugs</a>, pick a bug
346 that no one is currently shepherding (ask on
347 <a href="mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org">debian-policy@lists.debian.org</a> if you're not sure if a particular bug
348 is being shepherded), and help it through the change process. This
349 will involve guiding the discussion, seeking additional input
350 (particularly from experts in the area being discussed), possibly
351 raising the issue on other mailing lists, proposing or getting other
352 people to propose specific wording changes, and writing diffs against
353 the current Policy document. All of the steps of <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess">Policy changes process</a>
354 can be done by people other than Policy team members except
355 the final acceptance steps and almost every change can be worked on
356 independently, so there's a lot of opportunity for people to help.
359 There are also some other, larger projects:
363 Policy is currently maintained in DebianDoc-SGML, which is no longer
364 very actively maintained and isn't a widely used or understood
365 format. The most logical replacement would be DocBook. However,
366 DocBook is a huge language with many tags and options, making it
367 rather overwhelming. We badly need someone with DocBook experience
368 to write a style guide specifying exactly which tags should be used
369 and what they should be used for so that we can limit ourselves to
370 an easy-to-understand and documented subset of the language.
373 Policy contains several appendices which are really documentation of
374 how parts of the dpkg system works rather than technical
375 Policy. Those appendices should be removed from the Policy document
376 and maintained elsewhere, probably as part of dpkg, and any Policy
377 statements in them moved into the main document. This project will
378 require reviewing the current contents of the appendices and feeding
379 the useful bits that aren't currently documented back to the dpkg
380 team as documentation patches.
383 Policy has grown organically over the years and suffers from
384 organizational issues because of it. It also doesn't make use of the
385 abilities that a current XML language might give us, such as being
386 able to extract useful portions of the document (all <b>must</b>
387 directives, for example). There has been quite a bit of discussion
388 of a new format that would allow for this, probably as part of
389 switching to DocBook, but as yet such a reorganization and reworking
390 has not been started.
395 <p>If you want to work on any of these projects, please mail
396 <a href="mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org">debian-policy@lists.debian.org </a> for more information. We'll be happy to
397 help you get started.
402 <div id="outline-container-4.1" class="outline-3">
403 <h3 id="sec-4.1">Maintenance procedures </h3>
404 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.1">
411 <div id="outline-container-4.2" class="outline-3">
412 <h3 id="sec-4.2">Repository layout </h3>
413 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.2">
417 The Git repository used for Debian Policy has the following branches:
421 master:: the current accepted changes that will be in the next release
424 bug<number>-<user>:: changes addressing bug <number>, shepherded by <user>
427 rra:: old history of Russ's arch repository, now frozen
430 srivasta:: old history of Manoj's arch repository
438 <div id="outline-container-4.3" class="outline-3">
439 <h3 id="sec-4.3">Managing a bug </h3>
440 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.3">
444 The process used by Policy team members to manage a bug, once there is
445 proposed wording, is:
449 Create a bug<number>-<user> branch for the bug, where <number> is
450 the bug number in the BTS and <user> is a designator of the Policy
451 team member who is shepherding the bug.
454 Commit wording changes in that branch until consensus is
455 achieved. Do not modify debian/changelog or upgrading-checklist.html
456 during this phase. Use the BTS to track who proposed the wording and
460 git pull master to make sure you have the latest version.
463 Once the change has been approved by enough people, git merge the
464 branch into master immediately after making the final commit adding
465 the changelog entry to minimize conflicts.
468 add the debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html changes, and
472 Push master out so other people may merge in their own bug branches
476 Tag the bug as pending and remove other process tags.
479 Delete the now-merged branch.
484 <p>The Git commands used for this workflow are:
488 <pre class="src src-Sh">git checkout -b bug12345-rra master
492 git push origin bug12345-rra
494 # update your local master branch
497 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
498 : git checkout -b temp master; git merge bug12345-rra
500 : git reset --hard HEAD;
501 : git checkout bug12345-rra; git branch -D temp
504 git merge bug12345-rra
505 # edit debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html
506 git add debian/changelog upgrading-checklist.html
508 git push origin master
509 git branch -d bug12345-rra
510 git push origin :bug12345-rra
517 For the debian/changelog entry, use the following format:
521 <pre class="example">* <document>: <brief change description>
522 Wording: <author of wording>
523 Seconded: <seconder>
524 Seconded: <seconder>
525 Closes: <bug numbers>
536 <pre class="example">* Policy: better document version ranking and empty Debian revisions
537 Wording: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
538 Seconded: Raphaƫl Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
539 Seconded: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
540 Seconded: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
541 Closes: #186700, #458910
551 <div id="outline-container-4.4" class="outline-3">
552 <h3 id="sec-4.4">Updating branches </h3>
553 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.4">
557 After commits to master have been pushed, either by you or by another
558 Policy team member, you will generally want to update your working bug
559 branches. The equivalent of the following commands should do that:
564 <pre class="src src-Sh">for i in `git show-ref --heads | awk '{print $2}'`; do
566 if [ <span style="color: #ffc1c1;">"$j"</span> != <span style="color: #ffc1c1;">"master"</span> ]; then
567 git checkout $j && git merge master
570 git push --all origin
577 assuming that you haven't packed the refs in your repository.
583 <div id="outline-container-4.5" class="outline-3">
584 <h3 id="sec-4.5">Making a release </h3>
585 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.5">
589 For a final Policy release, change UNRELEASED to unstable in
590 debian/changelog and update the timestamp to match the final release
591 time (dch -r may be helpful for this), update the release date in
592 upgrading-checklist.html, update Standards-Version in debian/control,
593 and commit that change. Then do the final release build and make sure
594 that it builds and installs.
597 Then, tag the repository and push the final changes to Alioth:
602 <pre class="src src-Sh">git tag -s v3.8.0.0
604 git push --tags origin
611 replacing the version number with the version of the release, of course.
614 Finally, announce the new Policy release on debian-devel-announce,
615 including in the announcement the upgrading-checklist section for the
622 <div id="outline-container-4.6" class="outline-3">
623 <h3 id="sec-4.6">Setting release goals </h3>
624 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-4.6">
628 Policy has a large bug backlog, and each bug against Policy tends to
629 take considerable time and discussion to resolve. I've found it
630 useful, when trying to find a place to start, to pick a manageable set
631 of bugs and set as a target resolving them completely before the next
632 Policy release. Resolving a bug means one of the following:
636 Proposing new language to address the bug that's seconded and
637 approved by the readers of the Policy list following the
638 PolicyChangesProcess (or that's accepted by one of the Policy
639 delegates if the change isn't normative; i.e., doesn't change the
640 technical meaning of the document).
643 Determining that the bug is not relevant to Policy and closing it.
646 Determining that either there is no consensus that the bug indicates
647 a problem, that the solutions that we can currently come up with are
648 good solutions, or that Debian is ready for the change. These bugs
649 are tagged wontfix and then closed after a while. A lot of Policy
650 bugs fall into this category; just because it would be useful to
651 have a policy in some area doesn't mean that we're ready to make
652 one, and keeping the bugs open against Policy makes it difficult to
653 tell what requires work. If the problem is worth writing a policy
654 for, it will come up again later when hopefully the project
655 consensus is more mature.
660 <p>Anyone can pick bugs and work resolve them. The final determination to
661 accept a wording change or reject a bug will be made by a Policy
662 delegate, but if a patch is already written and seconded, or if a
663 summary of why a bug is not ready to be acted on is already written,
664 the work is much easier for the Policy delegate.
667 One of the best ways to help out is to pick one or two bugs (checking
668 on the Policy list first), say that you'll make resolving them a goal
669 for the next release, and guide the discussion until the bugs can
670 reach one of the resolution states above.
675 <p class="author"> Author: Manoj Srivastava
676 <a href="mailto:srivasta@debian.org"><srivasta@debian.org></a>
678 <p class="date"> Date: 2009-09-12 17:30:48 CDT</p>
679 <p class="creator">HTML generated by org-mode 6.30trans in emacs 23</p>