On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 02:49:38PM +0100, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 12:23:30PM +0000, Michael Banck wrote:
> > Another thing we could do is alert sponsors about checking for lintian
> > overrides when they review a package.
>
> or we could disallow the override of >= E: errors in lintian, and make
> lintian reboot your computer, fill your gpg with /dev/random bits, and
> install windows over your Debian if you override such errors.
Interesting idea. I'd prefer to use a bit softer approach, if only
because I wouldn't want to push our developers (DD or not) to non-free
software, even if they misbehave. ;-)
How about letting lintian report all messages always, with an extra note
for overrides? Like this[0]:
I: Override installed for the following message:
I: W: pioneers binary: binary-without-manpage usr/games/pioneers-editor
With -i, the first line should expand to something like:
I: Override installed for the following message:
I: The maintainer installed an override for the following error. This
I: means that lintian is wrong about this, and there is nothing wrong
I: with the package.
Or perhaps a little less maintainer-friendly, suggesting that the
override could be incorrect. :-)
AFAIK there are three solutions for handling a lintian message:
- If the package is indeed broken, fix it. The most usual.
- If lintian is broken, report a bug and/or fix it and submit a patch.
In the mean time, ignore the message. Not so usual.
- If lintian is not right, but this is such a weird cornercase that it
is not reasonable to expect that, install an override. Very unusual.
This means that lintian overrides should be very rare. And it is no
problem to get messages like above for them.
Thanks,
Bas
[0] Ok, this is not something that should be overridden, but I wanted to
use my own package, and I don't think I have any overrides installed
anywhere.
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