[Dctrl-tools-devel] Bug#525525: Bug#525525: Bug#525525: do not separate stanzas with empty lines when showing Description field only

[Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 03:56:45PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Mmmmmhhh, I surely understand your consistency argument, but I confess
> I really don't see where the "feature" is.

A feature is something the developer intended, a bug is something the developer
didn't intend.  A feature can certainly be a bad idea, making it a misfeature.

I suspect I wasn't really looking at grep-dctrl output being
machine-processable back then.  I was more concerned about eyeball
friendliness.

> Actually, you just made me wonder whether APT and friends would digest
> stanzas not separated by empty lines (which technically are not
> required by the mbox format whereas they are always there in
> practice).

The mbox format is not relevant here.  It's only superficially similar to the
dctrl format.

My gold standard for input is Debian policy, plus what the tools handle.
The output should be that too, except for the hysterical reasons discussed
above and earlier, it isn't.

Now, I wonder if we can just say "sorry, you lose" to any script currently
depending on this misfeature?

-- 
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland
http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/
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