ambiguity in the guidelines

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 09:16 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Thursday 06 July 2006 09:08, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > All this (and the warning in rpmlint) does, is to add confusion. I
> > prefer strict and clear guidelines.
> >
> > I.e. either
> > 1) CHANGELOGNAME is a freeform string. You can stick anything into it
> > you might find useful.
> >
> > 2) Mandate a text format for CHANGELOGNAME. No exceptions allowed.
> 
> There is plenty of room between the 'do whatever you want' and 'YOU MUST DO 
> EXACTLY AS WE SAY OR ELSE!!!' standpoints.
> 
> CHANGELOGNAME is somewhat freeform. 

Technically, it is 100% freeform - I checked the source code. 
Nothing inside of CHANGELOGNAME is explicitly parsed. Not even email
addresses. It's just a \0 terminated char[] starting after the Date
string.

>  You can put as little or as much as you 
> want.  Best practices would have you put your name, email address, and 
> optionally the version-release associated with this changelog.  You could 
> also put that version-release within the changelog entry rather than on the 
> CHANGELOGNAME line.  This is up to the packager's discretion.
Your last sentence is what I find not helpful. As I perceive it, you
seem to be keen on "making things unnecessarily complicated and
confusing".

> Reviewers can suggest that the packager follow the best practice, but in the 
> end it would be up to the packager on this issue.
... simply confusion.

Ralf