where to maintain DEP8^W autopkgtest spec now

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 12:00:04PM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> some two weeks ago I committed [1] to adjust the spec location in
> http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep8/ but today this still hasn't been
> updated. Apparently this doesn't happen automatically; could you
> please poke this to use the current svn version?

Hi Martin, I'll leave the answer to this specific question to Charles,
because I think he is the one who is most up to date with the dep.d.n
setup.

However, your mail gives me a change to raise a subject I've wanted to
discuss with you since a while: where should the autopkgtest spec be
maintained now?

I think DEP8 should be moved to "ACCEPTED" state: it is implemented, by
multiple tools even, and its actual usage is gaining throughout the
archive.

As DEP's are *not* meant to be evolving (see for instance
http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/ and the disclaimer at the beginning of
it), but given that specifications do need to evolve overtime, the
question is where the spec should be maintained. I think we should
answer this question before making further changes to DEP8 itself. In
fact, I think the only further change we should make to DEP8 is move it
to ACCEPTED, and point to the final place where the autopkgtest spec
will be maintained.

To me, the most reasonable place to maintain it seems to be the
debian-policy package. Of course *not* as part of the official Debian
Policy Manual, but rather as an auxiliary policy (e.g., the Debian Perl
Policy). I'm getting debian-policy at lists.d.o in the loop to check if
that would be fine with them.

FWIW, I do not think that maintaining the spec in the autopkgtest
package itself is a good idea, because the spec has clearly outgrown the
specific implementation called autopkgtest, and coordinating changes in
a more neutral place would be preferable, IMO.

What do other autopkgtest-ers think of this idea?

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack at upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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