Re: lintian warning native-package-with-dash-version

[Carlo Segre <segre@iit.edu>]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:

> Hi
>  I am new to packaging and I am trying to package gnuplotfortran whose 
> upstream is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplotfortran . The 
> upstream source is called gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.tar.bz2 . I downloaded this 
> to /tmp .
>
> Then I did
>
> tar xjvf /tmp/gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.tar.bz2 -C .
> tar czvf gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.tar.gz gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1/
> cd gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1/
> dh_make --copyright lgpl -e kamaraju@gmail.com -f \
> ../gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.tar.gz -l
>
> Then I proceeded on doing dpkg-buildpackage etc., At the end I obtained 
> gnuplotfortran_0.2.2-1-1.dsc . But if I do
>
>
> $lintian -i gnuplotfortran_0.2.2-1-1.dsc
> W: gnuplotfortran source: native-package-with-dash-version
> N:
> N:   Native packaging should only be used if a piece of software was
> N:   written specifically to be turned into a Debian package. In this case,
> N:   the version number should not contain a debian revision part.
> N:
> N:   Native source packages are sometimes created by accident. In most
> N:   cases the reason is the location of the original source tarball.
> N:   dpkg-source searches for this in
> N:   ../package_upstream-version.orig.tar.gz.
> N:
>
> Q1) Where am I doing wrong? How can I get rid of this error?

I think that this has to do with the -1 in the name of the original 
tarball.  You might consider using the -v 0.2.2.1 option in dh_make to 
convert this to a compliant version number.  The second -1 will still be 
there in the final package because that is the debian revision.  The cause 
that lintian has suggested does not seem to be your case as you properly 
identified the source tarball in the dh_make command.

> Q2) should I create a symbolic link gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.orig.tar.gz which 
> points to gnuplotfortran-0.2.2-1.tar.gz before proceeding with 
> dpkg-buildpackage? I see that it is automatically created after 
> dpkg-buildpackage step.

You can do that before too, but are you sure that the name is correct? 
According to standards, the name should have an underscore rather than the 
dash which separates the name from upstream revision number.  In addition, 
as I mentioned before, you probably need to change the -1 to a .1 to avoid 
the lintian error so the proper link should be:

	gnuplotfortran_0.2.2.1.orig.tar.gz

and the .dsc file should be

	gnuplotfortran_0.2.2.1-1.dsc

Cheers,

Carlo

--
Carlo U. Segre -- Professor of Physics
Associate Dean for Special Projects, Graduate College
Illinois Institute of Technology
Voice: 312.567.3498            Fax: 312.567.3494
Carlo.Segre@iit.edu    http://www.iit.edu/~segre