[Dict-common-dev] Re: dictionaries-common minor changes

[Rafael Laboissiere]

[N.B.: I am Cc:ing this reply to dict-common-dev@lists.sf.net.  You
should also subscribe to that list and I hope that we will use it for
dictionaries-common development issues.]

* David Coe <davidc@debian.org> [2001-12-03 21:55]:

> I've made (so far) two tiny changes and checked them in to the cvs at
> sourceforge; before I check in more I should ask you whether/how you want
> me to do that.  Should I accumulate all my changes here and check them in
> en-masse to a new release, or do you prefer minor incremental updates as
> they get tested?

As you wish.  We have adopted both strategies these last weeks.  The
release series is 0.4.99.x, because we decided that 0.5.0 will be the first
"public" one.  At any rate, every time you cvs commit some change, add the
appropriate entry to debian/changelog, without making it a "releasable" file
(for instance, I just left the maintainer/date blank).  I just did it for
your last two changes.

> I haven't looked; can/should we set sf up to email checkin notices
> to each of the sf dictitionaries-common developers?

I do not know how to automate this.  The simplest way to do is to let
developers (un)subscribe to dict-common-cvs@lists.sf.net on a individual
basis.

> Do you use cvs-buildpackage?  (the current tag names make me think you
> don't; any reason why not?  (just another way to introduce consistency)).

No, I do not use cvs-buildpackage because I was too lazy to read the
documentation :-)  

If you see fit, just go ahead and start using it.  I will catch up later.

> Thanks; I'm still playing and testing.

Thanks. 

Here is my personal situation.  Starting tomorrow I will be in a business
trip that will last for one month.  Since I will be in the Third World, I am
not sure that I will be able to actively develop dictionaries-common.  This
is why I rushed to get the package in a usable state before the December 5
deadline.

I think that Agustin, Roland, and you should go wildly and make any changes
you think it is necessary.  CVS is our friend here, and do not claim any
strong parternity on dictionaries-common.  It has been and will always be a
collective work.

> Oh, important question: you said the other day that the use of this would
> require a change to Debian Policy -- is that just because we're "using
> debconf as a registry" as lintian likes to complain, or is there some more
> serious violation/modification of existing policy?

I wrote that because of the the way sub-policies become official in Debian.
They start as separated processes, but at a given point become (sort of)
part of the main Debian Policy.  Look how the perl-policy, mime-policy,
menu-policy, and debconf-specification documentations are now included in
debian-policy.  I suppose that one day the dsdt-policy document will also
become part of debian-policy, but this is not going to happen for woody,
since we are in the freeze process.
 
> If not, we could introduce it without chagning Policy, and lobby to add the
> Dictionary Policy later after it's become standard practice (there are few
> enough affected developers that I think this might be possible; maybe I'm
> dreaming).

Well, this is what will happen anyway.  When everybody will be happy with
the dictionaries-common package, we will abandon the staging area and
mass-upload the packages to unstable.  If this happens during the freeze
process, we fill a severity=critical bug against dictionaries-common, such
that it does not get into testing.

What you (and the others) think?

-- 
Rafael