The technical committee was asked in bug #904302 to decide whether to
allow the use of vendor-specific patch series in the Debian archive.

The following resolution was passed:

==== Resolution ====

Vendor-specific patch series are a feature of dpkg that can be used to
apply a different series of quilt patches when the source package is
unpacked on different systems. Since Debian source packages are usually treated as a pure transport format (like tar), this property can cause confusion and frustration for users. Examples could be if only the
series file for one vendor is updated, or a source package is unpacked
on one system and then transferred to a system with a different vendor
for debugging.

The Committee recognises that there is a need for packages to behave differently when built on different distributions, but this should be
done by using differing source packages, or as part of the build
process using current and future practices such as patches with
conditional behaviour or patching of files during the build rather than
at source unpacking time.

Since this feature is used by several packages today, we need a
reasonable transition period. They will be considered buggy from when
this resolution is accepted, but it will not be considered severe enough
to warrant immediate removal from Debian. After Buster is released, the presence of a vendor-specific patch series will be a violation of a MUST directive in Debian policy.

The Committee therefore resolves that:

1. Any use of dpkg's vendor-specific patch series feature is a bug for
packages in the Debian archive (including contrib and non-free).

This should be implemented in Debian Policy by declaring that a
package SHOULD NOT contain a non-default series file.

2. After Buster is released, use of the vendor-specific patch series
feature is forbidden in the Debian archive.

This should be implemented in Debian Policy by declaring that a
package MUST NOT contain a non-default series file.

==== End of resolution ====

Please see https://bugs.debian.org/904302 for discussion of this bug.

--
Tollef Fog Heen, for the technical committee
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are

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