Re: Proposal: Reject packages that violate policy

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Darren Benham writes ("Proposal:  Reject packages that violate policy"):
...
> I have just heard that, as strange as it sounds, it's not part of
> policy to reject a package from incoming that violates policy.
> THEREFORE, I propose that it be made part of policy to reject from
> incoming packages that contain policy errors and that the standard
> of measure be the program lintian.  Any package with lintian
> *errors* be rejected.

I disagree most strongly.  Policy violations are largely bugs.  This
proposal is equivalent to not accepting uploads with bugs.

Certainly the archive maintainers should be allowed to reject packages
for problems which prevent the proper management of the archive or
break badly on users' systems.

However, automated checks like this will be hard to bypass when we
need to, and harder to change than a manual.

Ian.