Bug#356051: lintian: Add a warning if the Initial Release of a package does not have an ITP.
Margarita Manterola <debian@marga.com.ar> writes:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 1.23.15
> Severity: wishlist
> Hi!
> I think it would be nice if Lintian warned when a package that has only
> one changelog entry (thus --> Initial Release) does not include the
> closing of a bug (ITP).
I understand the motivation, but I think there would be too many false
positives for this to be a worthwhile check in practice. It's not unusual
for upstream sources to split apart or spawn new packages that need
separate source packages, and in that case there's not much reason for the
ITP. Consider, for instance, the modular X migration currently underway;
all of the new modular packages would trigger this warning.
Also, while I realize that this isn't exactly lintian's intended mission,
a lot of people build packages for their own use or for use internal to an
organization, and still want to use lintian to check those packages. For
example, at Stanford, we try to keep all of our internal packages
lintian-clean. This warning would always trigger and would always have to
be overridden, which would be rather annoying.
> As per the Debian Developer's reference[1], "you must then submit a bug
> report (...) against the pseudo-package wnpp describing your plan to
> create a new package, including, but not limiting yourself to, a
> description of the package, the license of the prospective package, and
> the current URL where it can be downloaded from. "
> [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ch-pkgs.en.html
> The use of the word "must" indicates that it is somewhat compulsory to
> do the ITP (even if many developers don't do it). So I think it's a good
> idea to have a lintian check about this.
Note that the Developer's Reference is not Policy, so "must" in there
doesn't have the same force of requirement.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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