4 Author: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
5 Date: 2009-09-13 00:31:16 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 PolicyChangesProcess.
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
74 The Debian Policy team are official project delegates (see the DPL
75 delegation). All of the Policy team members do basically the same
76 work: shepherd proposals, propose wording, and merge changes when
77 consensus has been reached. The current delegates are:
83 + Colin Watson (cjwatson)
85 The special tasks of Policy delegates are:
87 + Commit access to the Git repository and uploads of the debian-policy
88 package itself, which makes them responsible for debian-policy as a
89 package in Debian and for making final decisions about when a new
90 version is released and what bits go into it.
91 + Rejecting proposals. Anyone can argue against a proposal, but only
92 Policy delegates can formally reject it.
93 + Counting seconds and weighing objections to proposals to determine
94 whether the proposal has sufficient support to be included.
96 Everything else can be done by anyone, or any DD (depending on the
97 outcome of the discussion about seconding). We explicitly want any
98 Debian DD to review and second or object to proposals. The more
99 participation, the better. Many other people are active on the Policy
100 mailing list without being project delegates.
105 The Debian Policy team is responsible for maintaining and coordinating
106 updates to the technical Policy manuals for the project. The primary
107 output of the team is the Debian Policy Manual and the assorted
108 subpolicies, released as the debian-policy Debian package and also
109 published at [http://www.debian.org/doc/].
111 In addition to the main technical manual, the team currently also maintains:
113 + [Debian Menu sub-policy]
114 + [Debian Perl Policy]
115 + [Debian MIME support sub-policy]
116 + [Debconf Specification]
117 + [Authoritative list of virtual package names ]
119 These documents are maintained using the [Policy changes process], and
120 the current state of all change proposals is tracked using the
124 [Debian Menu sub-policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/
125 [Debian Perl Policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/perl-policy/
126 [Debian MIME support sub-policy]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/
127 [Debconf Specification]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/debconf_specification.html
128 [Authoritative list of virtual package names ]: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt
129 [Policy changes process]: http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess
130 [debian-policy BTS]: http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy
135 The best way to help is to review the [current open bugs], pick a bug
136 that no one is currently shepherding (ask on
137 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org] if you're not sure if a particular bug
138 is being shepherded), and help it through the change process. This
139 will involve guiding the discussion, seeking additional input
140 (particularly from experts in the area being discussed), possibly
141 raising the issue on other mailing lists, proposing or getting other
142 people to propose specific wording changes, and writing diffs against
143 the current Policy document. All of the steps of [Policy changes process]
144 can be done by people other than Policy team members except
145 the final acceptance steps and almost every change can be worked on
146 independently, so there's a lot of opportunity for people to help.
148 There are also some other, larger projects:
150 + Policy is currently maintained in DebianDoc-SGML, which is no longer
151 very actively maintained and isn't a widely used or understood
152 format. The most logical replacement would be DocBook. However,
153 DocBook is a huge language with many tags and options, making it
154 rather overwhelming. We badly need someone with DocBook experience
155 to write a style guide specifying exactly which tags should be used
156 and what they should be used for so that we can limit ourselves to
157 an easy-to-understand and documented subset of the language.
158 + Policy contains several appendices which are really documentation of
159 how parts of the dpkg system works rather than technical
160 Policy. Those appendices should be removed from the Policy document
161 and maintained elsewhere, probably as part of dpkg, and any Policy
162 statements in them moved into the main document. This project will
163 require reviewing the current contents of the appendices and feeding
164 the useful bits that aren't currently documented back to the dpkg
165 team as documentation patches.
166 + Policy has grown organically over the years and suffers from
167 organizational issues because of it. It also doesn't make use of the
168 abilities that a current XML language might give us, such as being
169 able to extract useful portions of the document (all *must*
170 directives, for example). There has been quite a bit of discussion
171 of a new format that would allow for this, probably as part of
172 switching to DocBook, but as yet such a reorganization and reworking
173 has not been started.
175 If you want to work on any of these projects, please mail
176 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org ] for more information. We'll be happy to
177 help you get started.
180 [current open bugs]: http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy
181 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org]: mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org
182 [Policy changes process]: http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess
183 [debian-policy@lists.debian.org ]: mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org
185 Maintenance procedures
186 =======================
191 The Git repository used for Debian Policy has the following branches:
193 + master:: the current accepted changes that will be in the next release
194 + bug<number>-<user>:: changes addressing bug <number>, shepherded by <user>
195 + rra:: old history of Russ's arch repository, now frozen
196 + srivasta:: old history of Manoj's arch repository
201 The process used by Policy team members to manage a bug, once there is
202 proposed wording, is:
204 + Create a bug<number>-<user> branch for the bug, where <number> is
205 the bug number in the BTS and <user> is a designator of the Policy
206 team member who is shepherding the bug.
207 + Commit wording changes in that branch until consensus is
208 achieved. Do not modify debian/changelog or upgrading-checklist.html
209 during this phase. Use the BTS to track who proposed the wording and
211 + git pull master to make sure you have the latest version.
212 + Once the change has been approved by enough people, git merge the
213 branch into master immediately after making the final commit adding
214 the changelog entry to minimize conflicts.
215 + add the debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html changes, and
217 + Push master out so other people may merge in their own bug branches
219 + Tag the bug as pending and remove other process tags.
220 + Delete the now-merged branch.
222 The Git commands used for this workflow are:
223 git checkout -b bug12345-rra master
227 git push origin bug12345-rra
229 # update your local master branch
232 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
233 git checkout -b temp master; git merge bug12345-rra
235 git reset --hard HEAD;
236 git checkout bug12345-rra; git branch -D temp
239 git merge bug12345-rra
240 # edit debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html
241 git add debian/changelog upgrading-checklist.html
243 git push origin master
244 git branch -d bug12345-rra
245 git push origin :bug12345-rra
248 For the debian/changelog entry, use the following format:
249 * <document>: <brief change description>
250 Wording: <author of wording>
253 Closes: <bug numbers>
257 * Policy: better document version ranking and empty Debian revisions
258 Wording: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
259 Seconded: Raphaƫl Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
260 Seconded: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
261 Seconded: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
262 Closes: #186700, #458910
268 After commits to master have been pushed, either by you or by another
269 Policy team member, you will generally want to update your working bug
270 branches. The equivalent of the following commands should do that:
272 for i in `git show-ref --heads | awk '{print $2}'`; do
274 if [ "$j" != "master" ]; then
275 git checkout $j && git merge master
278 git push --all origin
281 assuming that you haven't packed the refs in your repository.
286 For a final Policy release, change UNRELEASED to unstable in
287 debian/changelog and update the timestamp to match the final release
288 time (dch -r may be helpful for this), update the release date in
289 upgrading-checklist.html, update Standards-Version in debian/control,
290 and commit that change. Then do the final release build and make sure
291 that it builds and installs.
293 Then, tag the repository and push the final changes to Alioth:
297 git push --tags origin
300 replacing the version number with the version of the release, of course.
302 Finally, announce the new Policy release on debian-devel-announce,
303 including in the announcement the upgrading-checklist section for the
306 Setting release goals
307 ======================
309 Policy has a large bug backlog, and each bug against Policy tends to
310 take considerable time and discussion to resolve. I've found it
311 useful, when trying to find a place to start, to pick a manageable set
312 of bugs and set as a target resolving them completely before the next
313 Policy release. Resolving a bug means one of the following:
315 + Proposing new language to address the bug that's seconded and
316 approved by the readers of the Policy list following the
317 PolicyChangesProcess (or that's accepted by one of the Policy
318 delegates if the change isn't normative; i.e., doesn't change the
319 technical meaning of the document).
320 + Determining that the bug is not relevant to Policy and closing it.
321 + Determining that either there is no consensus that the bug indicates
322 a problem, that the solutions that we can currently come up with are
323 good solutions, or that Debian is ready for the change. These bugs
324 are tagged wontfix and then closed after a while. A lot of Policy
325 bugs fall into this category; just because it would be useful to
326 have a policy in some area doesn't mean that we're ready to make
327 one, and keeping the bugs open against Policy makes it difficult to
328 tell what requires work. If the problem is worth writing a policy
329 for, it will come up again later when hopefully the project
330 consensus is more mature.
332 Anyone can pick bugs and work resolve them. The final determination to
333 accept a wording change or reject a bug will be made by a Policy
334 delegate, but if a patch is already written and seconded, or if a
335 summary of why a bug is not ready to be acted on is already written,
336 the work is much easier for the Policy delegate.
338 One of the best ways to help out is to pick one or two bugs (checking
339 on the Policy list first), say that you'll make resolving them a goal
340 for the next release, and guide the discussion until the bugs can
341 reach one of the resolution states above.