Hi, I've recently done a little survey about the fields used in our control files (*_Release files excluded). Currently there are ~80 different fields [1] used in testing and unstable, which basically fall into these groups:
1) listed in debian policy and accompanied sub-policies (like Python-*). 2) handled by dpkg (wanna-build/buildds/dak/other?), but not mentioned in policy or sub-policies (like Vcs-*) 3) user-defined fields, introduced via X[SBC]-foo as described in policy #5.7. Some of them look like leftovers and should be removed in favor of a better one, like (URL), but clearly all of them should be properly documented somewhere, so that people can reused existing ones, instead of eventually inventing new ones with same or similar functionality. This is especially true for user-defined fields. I'm uncertain what to propose for the second group, which are self-explanatory, but still. So, the question being: from where to start documenting and sorting these out: policy, dpkg/doc/, devref, wiki, blogs ;-), somewhere else. A list of packages using most interesting or any fields could be easily prepared if needed. [1] http://people.debian.org/~danchev/survey/1.known_fields -- pub 4096R/0E4BD0AB <people.fccf.net/danchev/key pgp.mit.edu>
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