4 Author: Manoj Srivastava And Russ Allbery <srivasta@debian.org>
5 Date: 2009-09-15 15:48:35 CDT
11 + Website:: [http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy]
12 + Mailing list:: debian-policy@lists.debian.org lists
14 * git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
15 * Browser: [http://git.debian.org/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git]
16 + Unix group:: dbnpolicy
17 + Alioth Project:: [http://alioth.debian.org/projects/dbnpolicy] (exists
18 to manage the repository but not otherwise used)
20 Interacting with the team
21 ==========================
23 + Email contact:: [mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org]
24 + Request tracker:: [http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy]
26 Debian Policy uses a formal procedure and a set of user tags to manage
27 the lifecycle of change proposals. For definitions of those tags and
28 proposal states and information about what the next step is for each
29 phase, see [Policy changes process].
31 Once the wording for a change has been finalized, please send a patch
32 against the current Git master branch to the bug report, if you're not
33 familiar with Git, the following commands are the basic process:
35 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
36 git checkout -b <local-branch-name>
38 # edit files, but don't make changes to upgrading-checklist or debian/changelog
43 # update your branch against the current master
47 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
48 git checkout -b temp master; git merge <local-branch-name>
49 # If error, reset temp, merge master into local; else skip these three lines
50 git reset --hard HEAD;
51 git checkout <local-branch-name>;
53 # get rid of the temp branch:
56 # Checkout the local branch, to create the patch to send to the policy
57 git checkout <local-branch-name>
59 git format-patch -o $dir -s master
60 # check out the patches created in $dir
61 git send-email --from "you <your@email>" \
62 --to debian-policy@lists.debian.org \
66 <local-branch-name> is some convenient name designating your local
67 changes. You may want to use some common prefix like local-. You can
68 use git format-patch and git send-email if you want, but usually it's
72 [Policy changes process]: Process.txt
77 The Debian Policy team are official project delegates (see the DPL
78 delegation). All of the Policy team members do basically the same
79 work: shepherd proposals, propose wording, and merge changes when
80 consensus has been reached. The current delegates are:
86 + Colin Watson (cjwatson)
88 The special tasks of Policy delegates are:
90 + Commit access to the Git repository and uploads of the debian-policy
91 package itself, which makes them responsible for debian-policy as a
92 package in Debian and for making final decisions about when a new
93 version is released and what bits go into it.
94 + Rejecting proposals. Anyone can argue against a proposal, but only
95 Policy delegates can formally reject it.
96 + Counting seconds and weighing objections to proposals to determine
97 whether the proposal has sufficient support to be included.
99 Everything else can be done by anyone, or any DD (depending on the
100 outcome of the discussion about seconding). We explicitly want any
101 Debian DD to review and second or object to proposals. The more
102 participation, the better. Many other people are active on the Policy
103 mailing list without being project delegates.
108 The Debian Policy team is responsible for maintaining and coordinating
109 updates to the technical Policy manuals for the project. The primary
110 output of the team is the Debian Policy Manual and the assorted
111 subpolicies, released as the debian-policy Debian package and also
112 published at [http://www.debian.org/doc/].
114 In addition to the main technical manual, the team currently also maintains:
116 + [Debian Menu sub-policy]
117 + [Debian Perl Policy]
118 + [Debian MIME support sub-policy]
119 + [Debconf Specification]
120 + [Authoritative list of virtual package names ]
122 These documents are maintained using the [Policy changes process], and
123 the current state of all change proposals is tracked using the
127 [Debian Menu sub-policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/
128 [Debian Perl Policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/perl-policy/
129 [Debian MIME support sub-policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/
130 [Debconf Specification]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/debconf_specification.html
131 [Authoritative list of virtual package names ]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt
132 [Policy changes process]: Process.txt
133 [debian-policy BTS]: http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy
138 The best way to help is to review the [current open bugs], pick a bug
139 that no one is currently shepherding (ask on
140 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org] if you're not sure if a particular bug
141 is being shepherded), and help it through the change process. This
142 will involve guiding the discussion, seeking additional input
143 (particularly from experts in the area being discussed), possibly
144 raising the issue on other mailing lists, proposing or getting other
145 people to propose specific wording changes, and writing diffs against
146 the current Policy document. All of the steps of [Policy changes process]
147 can be done by people other than Policy team members except
148 the final acceptance steps and almost every change can be worked on
149 independently, so there's a lot of opportunity for people to help.
151 There are also some other, larger projects:
153 + Policy is currently maintained in DebianDoc-SGML, which is no longer
154 very actively maintained and isn't a widely used or understood
155 format. The most logical replacement would be DocBook. However,
156 DocBook is a huge language with many tags and options, making it
157 rather overwhelming. We badly need someone with DocBook experience
158 to write a style guide specifying exactly which tags should be used
159 and what they should be used for so that we can limit ourselves to
160 an easy-to-understand and documented subset of the language.
161 + Policy contains several appendices which are really documentation of
162 how parts of the dpkg system works rather than technical
163 Policy. Those appendices should be removed from the Policy document
164 and maintained elsewhere, probably as part of dpkg, and any Policy
165 statements in them moved into the main document. This project will
166 require reviewing the current contents of the appendices and feeding
167 the useful bits that aren't currently documented back to the dpkg
168 team as documentation patches.
169 + Policy has grown organically over the years and suffers from
170 organizational issues because of it. It also doesn't make use of the
171 abilities that a current XML language might give us, such as being
172 able to extract useful portions of the document (all *must*
173 directives, for example). There has been quite a bit of discussion
174 of a new format that would allow for this, probably as part of
175 switching to DocBook, but as yet such a reorganization and reworking
176 has not been started.
178 If you want to work on any of these projects, please mail
179 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org ] for more information. We'll be happy to
180 help you get started.
183 [current open bugs]: http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy
184 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org]: mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org
185 [Policy changes process]: Process.txt
186 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org ]: mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org
188 Maintenance procedures
189 =======================
194 The Git repository used for Debian Policy has the following branches:
196 + master:: the current accepted changes that will be in the next release
197 + bug<number>-<user>:: changes addressing bug <number>, shepherded by <user>
198 + rra:: old history of Russ's arch repository, now frozen
199 + srivasta:: old history of Manoj's arch repository
204 The process used by Policy team members to manage a bug, once there is
205 proposed wording, is:
207 + Create a bug<number>-<user> branch for the bug, where <number> is
208 the bug number in the BTS and <user> is a designator of the Policy
209 team member who is shepherding the bug.
210 + Commit wording changes in that branch until consensus is
211 achieved. Do not modify debian/changelog or upgrading-checklist.html
212 during this phase. Use the BTS to track who proposed the wording and
214 + git pull master to make sure you have the latest version.
215 + Once the change has been approved by enough people, git merge the
216 branch into master immediately after making the final commit adding
217 the changelog entry to minimize conflicts.
218 + add the debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html changes, and
220 + Push master out so other people may merge in their own bug branches
222 + Tag the bug as pending and remove other process tags.
223 + Delete the now-merged branch.
225 The Git commands used for this workflow are:
226 git checkout -b bug12345-rra master
230 git push origin bug12345-rra
232 # update your local master branch
235 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
236 git checkout -b temp master; git merge bug12345-rra
238 git reset --hard HEAD;
239 git checkout bug12345-rra; git branch -D temp
242 git merge bug12345-rra
243 # edit debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html
244 git add debian/changelog upgrading-checklist.html
246 git push origin master
247 git branch -d bug12345-rra
248 git push origin :bug12345-rra
251 For the debian/changelog entry, use the following format:
252 * <document>: <brief change description>
253 Wording: <author of wording>
256 Closes: <bug numbers>
260 * Policy: better document version ranking and empty Debian revisions
261 Wording: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
262 Seconded: Raphaƫl Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
263 Seconded: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
264 Seconded: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
265 Closes: #186700, #458910
271 After commits to master have been pushed, either by you or by another
272 Policy team member, you will generally want to update your working bug
273 branches. The equivalent of the following commands should do that:
275 for i in `git show-ref --heads | awk '{print $2}'`; do
277 if [ "$j" != "master" ]; then
278 git checkout $j && git merge master
281 git push --all origin
284 assuming that you haven't packed the refs in your repository.
289 For a final Policy release, change UNRELEASED to unstable in
290 debian/changelog and update the timestamp to match the final release
291 time (dch -r may be helpful for this), update the release date in
292 upgrading-checklist.html, update Standards-Version in debian/control,
293 and commit that change. Then do the final release build and make sure
294 that it builds and installs.
296 Then, tag the repository and push the final changes to Alioth:
300 git push --tags origin
303 replacing the version number with the version of the release, of course.
305 Finally, announce the new Policy release on debian-devel-announce,
306 including in the announcement the upgrading-checklist section for the
309 Setting release goals
310 ======================
312 Policy has a large bug backlog, and each bug against Policy tends to
313 take considerable time and discussion to resolve. I've found it
314 useful, when trying to find a place to start, to pick a manageable set
315 of bugs and set as a target resolving them completely before the next
316 Policy release. Resolving a bug means one of the following:
318 + Proposing new language to address the bug that's seconded and approved by
319 the readers of the Policy list following the [Policy changes process] (or
320 that's accepted by one of the Policy delegates if the change isn't
321 normative; i.e., doesn't change the technical meaning of the document).
322 + Determining that the bug is not relevant to Policy and closing it.
323 + Determining that either there is no consensus that the bug indicates
324 a problem, that the solutions that we can currently come up with are
325 good solutions, or that Debian is ready for the change. These bugs
326 are tagged wontfix and then closed after a while. A lot of Policy
327 bugs fall into this category; just because it would be useful to
328 have a policy in some area doesn't mean that we're ready to make
329 one, and keeping the bugs open against Policy makes it difficult to
330 tell what requires work. If the problem is worth writing a policy
331 for, it will come up again later when hopefully the project
332 consensus is more mature.
334 Anyone can pick bugs and work resolve them. The final determination to
335 accept a wording change or reject a bug will be made by a Policy
336 delegate, but if a patch is already written and seconded, or if a
337 summary of why a bug is not ready to be acted on is already written,
338 the work is much easier for the Policy delegate.
340 One of the best ways to help out is to pick one or two bugs (checking
341 on the Policy list first), say that you'll make resolving them a goal
342 for the next release, and guide the discussion until the bugs can
343 reach one of the resolution states above.
345 [Policy changes process]: ./Progress.org