Bug#1142295: debian-policy: Policy major digit should match the Debian release version

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> writes:

> Indeed -- we made Rules-Requires-Root and Priority:optional irrelevant
> recently, couldn't we also make Standards-Version an optional field?

> In many packages, having that field just results in needless churn of
> debian/ files.

This comes up regularly, and maybe it's not worth having the field just
for this reason given how much it apparently annoys people, but I've never
seen anyone provide a good solution for the primary use case I have for
Standards-Version: When I pick up a random package to update, I want to
know how far back in time I have to go in looking at the Debian Policy
upgrading checklist to see what I may need to update.

If people were religious about putting the Policy version they checked the
upgrading checklist for in the debian/changelog file, that would be
sufficient, but then that's the same amount of churn as just updating
debian/control, so....