Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Bug#552757: debian-policy: all caps "must"

0 views
Skip to first unread message

Jakub Wilk

unread,
Oct 28, 2009, 11:30:01 PM10/28/09
to
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: minor

"must" is a quite common word in the Debian Policy:

$ zgrep -c -i -w must /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt.gz
282

...but only one instance is written in all caps:

$ zgrep -C1 -w MUST /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt.gz
auto-compile that package and also makes it hard for other people to
reproduce the same binary package, all _required targets_ MUST be
non-interactive. At a minimum, required targets are the ones called

For consistency, I'd do s/MUST/must/.

--
Jakub Wilk

--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listm...@lists.debian.org

Giacomo A. Catenazzi

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 6:00:02 AM10/29/09
to
Jakub Wilk wrote:

> "must" is a quite common word in the Debian Policy:

> For consistency, I'd do s/MUST/must/.

But not automatically. On RFC usage "must" is different from "MUST", so
you SHOULD distinguish the normative "MUST" and with the non normative "must".

And BTW if we do such change, we SHOULD do also for the other
all-caps terms: MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHALL, ...).

ciao
cate

Giacomo A. Catenazzi

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 9:00:03 AM10/29/09
to
Jakub Wilk wrote:
> * Giacomo A. Catenazzi <ca...@debian.org>, 2009-10-29, 10:16:

>>> "must" is a quite common word in the Debian Policy:
>>
>>> For consistency, I'd do s/MUST/must/.
>>
>> But not automatically. On RFC usage "must" is different from "MUST",
>> so you SHOULD distinguish the normative "MUST" and with the non
>> normative "must".
>
> The Debian Policy is not an RFC. A lowercased "must" is normative, see
> section 1.1.

oops. I read your change in the wrong way.

So I agree with your change.


BTW the sentence about must (in 1.1) starts with "In the normative part",
and it is not is not always simple to distinguish the normative with
the informative part (but such problems are being slowly solved, removing
old non-normative text from main text).

Jakub Wilk

unread,
Oct 29, 2009, 9:00:06 AM10/29/09
to
* Giacomo A. Catenazzi <ca...@debian.org>, 2009-10-29, 10:16:
>>"must" is a quite common word in the Debian Policy:
>
>>For consistency, I'd do s/MUST/must/.
>
>But not automatically. On RFC usage "must" is different from "MUST", so
>you SHOULD distinguish the normative "MUST" and with the non normative
>"must".

The Debian Policy is not an RFC. A lowercased "must" is normative, see
section 1.1.

>And BTW if we do such change, we SHOULD do also for the other


>all-caps terms: MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHALL, ...).

Not much work to do:

$ zgrep -c -E 'MUST|SHALL|SHOULD|MAY|NOT' /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt.gz
1

--
Jakub Wilk

0 new messages