Bug#864997: lintian: please add copyright_check.py at the very least as a contrib

[lkcl <lkcl@lkcl.net>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.50.1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: upstream

hi,

i was at one point the maintainer of a package with thousands of files sourced
from several different projects.  the list of contributors grew to over
fifty separate individuals and it became flat-out impossible, on each
release, to manually verify that the files correctly matched the
debian/copyright file.

i looked in lintian to see if it had the features needed to make a TWO WAY
verification, and it did not.  lintian does not have the capability to
check that:

* the regular expressions of debian/copyright match the actual files
* nor can it report the MISSING files that the reg-ex's do not catch

so i wrote a program called copyright_check.py which covers every single
possibility of what is correctly matched, what is incorrectly matched,
and what is missing.

copies of the original program are being made and distributed arbitrarily.
one such copy (which ironically violates copyright) is here:
https://fossies.org/dox/drizzle-7.2.4-alpha/copyright__check_8py_source.html

one version may also be found here:
https://github.com/jaredly/pyjamas/blob/master/contrib/copyright_check.py

i cannot express how much time and effort the use of this program saved.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.4
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                          2.28-2
ii  bzip2                             1.0.6-8.1
ii  diffstat                          1.58-1
ii  file                              1:5.29-3
ii  gettext                           0.18.3.2-1
ii  intltool-debian                   0.35.0+20060710.1
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                   0.1.29+b6
ii  libarchive-zip-perl               1.57-1
ii  libclass-accessor-perl            0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                     0.38-2+b1
ii  libdpkg-perl                      1.18.18
ii  libemail-valid-perl               1.202-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl              0.03-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                   0.94-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl            0.416-1+b1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl     1.2.0-8
ii  libperl5.22 [libdigest-sha-perl]  5.22.2-1
ii  libperl5.24 [libdigest-sha-perl]  5.24.1-2
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl          0.13-1
ii  libtimedate-perl                  1.2000-1
ii  liburi-perl                       1.60-1
ii  libyaml-libyaml-perl              0.63-2
ii  man-db                            2.7.0.2-5
ii  patchutils                        0.3.4-2
ii  perl                              5.24.1-2
ii  t1utils                           1.38-4
ii  xz-utils                          5.1.1alpha+20120614-2

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  dpkg                                 1.18.18
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl                  0.19-1+b2
ii  perl                                 5.24.1-2
ii  perl-modules-5.22 [libautodie-perl]  5.22.2-1
ii  perl-modules-5.24 [libautodie-perl]  5.24.1-2

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
ii  binutils-multiarch     2.28-2
ii  dpkg-dev               1.18.18
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.72-2+b1
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.46-1

-- no debconf information