Due to vendor-specific patch series change.

    Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
    Seconded: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
    Seconded: gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org>
    Closes: #833401

    Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
    Seconded: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
    Seconded: gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org>
    Closes: #850156

Replace occurences of virtual-package-names-list.txt with
virtual-package-names-list.yaml in other files that reference the
older name (except changelog), e.g. Makefile and translations.

Convert the plain-text virtual-package-names-list to a structured,
machine-readable document, encoded in YAML.

Preserve all the information in the text version of the document, namely the
virtual package name, the description, the ChangeLog and whether or not the
virtual-package-provider normally provides an alternative.  The preamble,
section headings and ChangeLog are preserved in the form of YAML comments. The
structured document should be just as legible for humans as the prior version.

The preamble is mildly trimmed to remove a description of the format of the
text document (obsolete) and some superfluous attribution.

We expand the encoding of the alternative to include the binary path(s) that is
expected to be provided.

Rationale:

The current list cannot easily be machine-parsed. It's also likely out of date,
containing virtual package names that are not in use, and missing package names
that are in use. The pre-amble seems out-of-place and might better fit in the
policy document text.

By re-encoding in a machine-readable format, it shall be much easier to:

 • automate checking the status of the virtual package names herein against the
   names in use within the archive (e.g. from a UDD query).
 • check that a package which provides a virtual package name also registers
   paths in the alternatives system, if this document suggests it should (in
   e.g. lintian or some other QA tool)

I envisage many future possibilities, too, such as encoding more properties
about the "interface" of a program name registered as an alternative, such
as command-line arguments that should (or must) be accepted, etc.

The YAML schema is as follows (here in "Kwalify" syntax):

map:
  schemaVersion: {type: text, required: True}
  virtualPackages:
    seq:
      - map:
          name: {type: str, required: True}
          description: {type: str, required: True}
          alternatives:
            seq:
             - {type: str, required: True}

Future work:

 • simple tooling in the policy source tree to validate this file against
   the schema
 • house-keeping the list based on the names in use in-archive
 • lintian check for virtual package/alternatives correspondence
 • move the preamble out of this document and into a policy section
 • move the ChangeLog somewhere else
 • explore extensions to e.g. encode more properties about the nature of
   program names registered as alternatives

Dmitry Bogatov authored Nov 09, 2018 and Sean Whitton committed Nov 17, 2018

According to #913154, there is consensus, that `/etc/init.d/skeleton'
is not suitable location for example init.d script, and actually
duplicates information, provided by init-d-script(5) manpage.

Suggested-by: Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>

See: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/10/msg00004.html

Suggested-by: Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>

    Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
    Seconded: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
    Seconded: Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>
    Closes: #188731