Hi!

Currently the Debian policy lists several files that are generated by
dpkg tools, but because there was no matching dpkg tool to clean them
up, it delegates that responsibility to packagers. With dpkg 1.22.3 a
new dpkg-buildtree tool was introduced that supports a «clean» action
precisely to take care of removing all these files. In the future I'd
like to change the location of some of these files, but that requires
for packages that do not use a helper to be updated to match the dpkg
behavior. While I expect this to be controlled via dpkg-build-api, it
would be best if such packages switched to use dpkg-buildtree to have
automatic handling when that time comes.

I've worded the changes as an example, because I don't want to impose
that packages should be using this if they are using a helper or that
helpers necessarily have to call it. If you'd prefer me to spell that
out more explicitly I'm happy to try to come up with some wording. It
intends to be more informational than a requirement, as I am going to
be filing wishlist bugs with patches as time permits, anyway.

I'm attaching a patch to add references to that new tool.

Thanks,
Guillem

Hello,

Instead of "It may also be wise ..." can you use one of the sets of
magic words from Policy 1.1, please?

Hi!

This text was already part of policy and the proposed patch did not
really touch it, except for wrapping it into a new line. I think
modifying it feels a bit out-of-scope for this request? But if you
think it's relevant, and the sentence should be improved as part of
this, then I'll try to provide some wording. :)

Thanks,
Guillem

Hello,

Ah yes, sorry, that is indeed out-of-scope.

Hello,

Seconded.

It seems prudent to get reference to this tool into Policy as soon as
possible, even if we're not yet sure how it relates to debhelper.