Re: Does lintian check menu files? (should it?)

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

David Huggins-Daines wrote:
> Specifically, the package name in the menu file did not correspond to
> the packages' actual names (rxvt's said 'xbase' and gtimer's said
> 'gedit') This appears to cause the latest version of update-menus not
> to install them.  I assume that's the correct behaviour for
> update-menus?  (it seems like a reasonable sanity check)
> 
> I assume the problem arises when people write their menu files with cp
> (the syntax of the files *is* somewhat foreign - I wrote mine that way
> too :-) and don't look hard enough at them before building the package.
> 
> I don't know enough about the 'menu' package to know what other common
> mistakes might happen, but this one would be pretty simple to check
> for in lintian, and should prevent trivial bug-reports, or, worse yet,
> severe annoyance on the part of users who have been sold on the wonders
> of our menu system. (like mine have)

Lintian has a rather complete test (I wrote it) that checks for 14 common
problems with menu files, including wrong "package()".

BTW, I think that the menu file format's a little dodgy myself (meaning no
offense to Joost). An interesting project would be to modify menu so it
accepts a format like:

Package: pdmenu
Needs: text
Section: Apps/Shells
Title: pdmenu
Command: /usr/bin/pdmenu

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-- 
see shy jo