1 -*- mode: org; fill-column: 78 -*-
3 #+STARTUP: lognotedone lognotestate
6 #+AUTHOR: Manoj Srivastava And Russ Allbery
7 #+EMAIL: srivasta@debian.org
8 #+OPTIONS: H:3 num:nil toc:nil \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t -:t f:t *:t TeX:t LaTeX:nil skip:t d:nil tags:not-in-toc
9 #+LINK_HOME: http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Policy
10 #+LINK_UP: http://www.debian.org/
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37 + Website:: http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy
38 + Mailing list:: debian-policy@lists.debian.org lists
40 * git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
41 * Browser: http://git.debian.org/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git
42 + Unix group:: dbnpolicy
43 + Alioth Project:: http://alioth.debian.org/projects/dbnpolicy (exists
44 to manage the repository but not otherwise used)
46 ** Interacting with the team
48 + Email contact:: mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org
49 + Request tracker:: http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy
51 Debian Policy uses a formal procedure and a set of user tags to manage
52 the lifecycle of change proposals. For definitions of those tags and
53 proposal states and information about what the next step is for each
54 phase, see PolicyChangesProcess.
56 Once the wording for a change has been finalized, please send a patch
57 against the current Git master branch to the bug report, if you're not
58 familiar with Git, the following commands are the basic process:
61 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/dbnpolicy/policy.git
62 git checkout -b <local-branch-name>
64 # edit files, but don't make changes to upgrading-checklist or debian/changelog
69 # update your branch against the current master
73 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
74 : git checkout -b temp master; git merge <local-branch-name>
75 # If error, reset temp, merge master into local; else skip these three lines
76 : git reset --hard HEAD;
77 : git checkout <local-branch-name>;
79 # get rid of the temp branch:
82 # Checkout the local branch, to create the patch to send to the policy
83 git checkout <local-branch-name>
85 git format-patch -o $dir -s master
86 # check out the patches created in $dir
87 git send-email --from "you <your@email>" \
88 --to debian-policy@lists.debian.org \
92 <local-branch-name> is some convenient name designating your local
93 changes. You may want to use some common prefix like local-. You can
94 use git format-patch and git send-email if you want, but usually it's
99 The Debian Policy team are official project delegates (see the DPL
100 delegation). All of the Policy team members do basically the same
101 work: shepherd proposals, propose wording, and merge changes when
102 consensus has been reached. The current delegates are:
108 + Colin Watson (cjwatson)
110 The special tasks of Policy delegates are:
112 + Commit access to the Git repository and uploads of the debian-policy
113 package itself, which makes them responsible for debian-policy as a
114 package in Debian and for making final decisions about when a new
115 version is released and what bits go into it.
116 + Rejecting proposals. Anyone can argue against a proposal, but only
117 Policy delegates can formally reject it.
118 + Counting seconds and weighing objections to proposals to determine
119 whether the proposal has sufficient support to be included.
121 Everything else can be done by anyone, or any DD (depending on the
122 outcome of the discussion about seconding). We explicitly want any
123 Debian DD to review and second or object to proposals. The more
124 participation, the better. Many other people are active on the Policy
125 mailing list without being project delegates.
129 The Debian Policy team is responsible for maintaining and coordinating
130 updates to the technical Policy manuals for the project. The primary
131 output of the team is the Debian Policy Manual and the assorted
132 subpolicies, released as the debian-policy Debian package and also
133 published at [[http://www.debian.org/doc/]].
135 In addition to the main technical manual, the team currently also maintains:
137 + [[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/menu-policy/][Debian Menu sub-policy]]
138 + [[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/perl-policy/][Debian Perl Policy]]
139 + [[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/][Debian MIME support sub-policy]]
140 + [[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/debconf_specification.html][Debconf Specification]]
141 + [[http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt][Authoritative list of virtual package names ]]
143 These documents are maintained using the [[http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess][Policy changes process]], and
144 the current state of all change proposals is tracked using the
145 [[http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy][debian-policy BTS]].
149 The best way to help is to review the [[http://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-policy][current open bugs]], pick a bug
150 that no one is currently shepherding (ask on
151 [[mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org][debian-policy@lists.debian.org]] if you're not sure if a particular bug
152 is being shepherded), and help it through the change process. This
153 will involve guiding the discussion, seeking additional input
154 (particularly from experts in the area being discussed), possibly
155 raising the issue on other mailing lists, proposing or getting other
156 people to propose specific wording changes, and writing diffs against
157 the current Policy document. All of the steps of [[http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess][Policy changes process]]
158 can be done by people other than Policy team members except
159 the final acceptance steps and almost every change can be worked on
160 independently, so there's a lot of opportunity for people to help.
162 There are also some other, larger projects:
164 + Policy is currently maintained in DebianDoc-SGML, which is no longer
165 very actively maintained and isn't a widely used or understood
166 format. The most logical replacement would be DocBook. However,
167 DocBook is a huge language with many tags and options, making it
168 rather overwhelming. We badly need someone with DocBook experience
169 to write a style guide specifying exactly which tags should be used
170 and what they should be used for so that we can limit ourselves to
171 an easy-to-understand and documented subset of the language.
172 + Policy contains several appendices which are really documentation of
173 how parts of the dpkg system works rather than technical
174 Policy. Those appendices should be removed from the Policy document
175 and maintained elsewhere, probably as part of dpkg, and any Policy
176 statements in them moved into the main document. This project will
177 require reviewing the current contents of the appendices and feeding
178 the useful bits that aren't currently documented back to the dpkg
179 team as documentation patches.
180 + Policy has grown organically over the years and suffers from
181 organizational issues because of it. It also doesn't make use of the
182 abilities that a current XML language might give us, such as being
183 able to extract useful portions of the document (all *must*
184 directives, for example). There has been quite a bit of discussion
185 of a new format that would allow for this, probably as part of
186 switching to DocBook, but as yet such a reorganization and reworking
187 has not been started.
189 If you want to work on any of these projects, please mail
190 [[mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org][debian-policy@lists.debian.org ]] for more information. We'll be happy to
191 help you get started.
193 ** Maintenance procedures
197 The Git repository used for Debian Policy has the following branches:
199 + master:: the current accepted changes that will be in the next release
200 + bug<number>-<user>:: changes addressing bug <number>, shepherded by <user>
201 + rra:: old history of Russ's arch repository, now frozen
202 + srivasta:: old history of Manoj's arch repository
206 The process used by Policy team members to manage a bug, once there is
207 proposed wording, is:
209 + Create a bug<number>-<user> branch for the bug, where <number> is
210 the bug number in the BTS and <user> is a designator of the Policy
211 team member who is shepherding the bug.
212 + Commit wording changes in that branch until consensus is
213 achieved. Do not modify debian/changelog or upgrading-checklist.html
214 during this phase. Use the BTS to track who proposed the wording and
216 + git pull master to make sure you have the latest version.
217 + Once the change has been approved by enough people, git merge the
218 branch into master immediately after making the final commit adding
219 the changelog entry to minimize conflicts.
220 + add the debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html changes, and
222 + Push master out so other people may merge in their own bug branches
224 + Tag the bug as pending and remove other process tags.
225 + Delete the now-merged branch.
227 The Git commands used for this workflow are:
229 git checkout -b bug12345-rra master
233 git push origin bug12345-rra
235 # update your local master branch
238 # If there are changes in master that make the branch not apply cleanly:
239 : git checkout -b temp master; git merge bug12345-rra
241 : git reset --hard HEAD;
242 : git checkout bug12345-rra; git branch -D temp
245 git merge bug12345-rra
246 # edit debian/changelog and upgrading-checklist.html
247 git add debian/changelog upgrading-checklist.html
249 git push origin master
250 git branch -d bug12345-rra
251 git push origin :bug12345-rra
254 For the debian/changelog entry, use the following format:
256 * <document>: <brief change description>
257 Wording: <author of wording>
260 Closes: <bug numbers>
265 * Policy: better document version ranking and empty Debian revisions
266 Wording: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
267 Seconded: Raphaƫl Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
268 Seconded: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
269 Seconded: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>
270 Closes: #186700, #458910
275 After commits to master have been pushed, either by you or by another
276 Policy team member, you will generally want to update your working bug
277 branches. The equivalent of the following commands should do that:
280 for i in `git show-ref --heads | awk '{print $2}'`; do
282 if [ "$j" != "master" ]; then
283 git checkout $j && git merge master
286 git push --all origin
289 assuming that you haven't packed the refs in your repository.
293 For a final Policy release, change UNRELEASED to unstable in
294 debian/changelog and update the timestamp to match the final release
295 time (dch -r may be helpful for this), update the release date in
296 upgrading-checklist.html, update Standards-Version in debian/control,
297 and commit that change. Then do the final release build and make sure
298 that it builds and installs.
300 Then, tag the repository and push the final changes to Alioth:
305 git push --tags origin
308 replacing the version number with the version of the release, of course.
310 Finally, announce the new Policy release on debian-devel-announce,
311 including in the announcement the upgrading-checklist section for the
314 ** Setting release goals
316 Policy has a large bug backlog, and each bug against Policy tends to
317 take considerable time and discussion to resolve. I've found it
318 useful, when trying to find a place to start, to pick a manageable set
319 of bugs and set as a target resolving them completely before the next
320 Policy release. Resolving a bug means one of the following:
322 + Proposing new language to address the bug that's seconded and
323 approved by the readers of the Policy list following the
324 PolicyChangesProcess (or that's accepted by one of the Policy
325 delegates if the change isn't normative; i.e., doesn't change the
326 technical meaning of the document).
327 + Determining that the bug is not relevant to Policy and closing it.
328 + Determining that either there is no consensus that the bug indicates
329 a problem, that the solutions that we can currently come up with are
330 good solutions, or that Debian is ready for the change. These bugs
331 are tagged wontfix and then closed after a while. A lot of Policy
332 bugs fall into this category; just because it would be useful to
333 have a policy in some area doesn't mean that we're ready to make
334 one, and keeping the bugs open against Policy makes it difficult to
335 tell what requires work. If the problem is worth writing a policy
336 for, it will come up again later when hopefully the project
337 consensus is more mature.
339 Anyone can pick bugs and work resolve them. The final determination to
340 accept a wording change or reject a bug will be made by a Policy
341 delegate, but if a patch is already written and seconded, or if a
342 summary of why a bug is not ready to be acted on is already written,
343 the work is much easier for the Policy delegate.
345 One of the best ways to help out is to pick one or two bugs (checking
346 on the Policy list first), say that you'll make resolving them a goal
347 for the next release, and guide the discussion until the bugs can
348 reach one of the resolution states above.