Re: direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Adam <Adam.Schmalhofer@gmx.de> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
> > But [removing the file during the ‘clean’ target of ‘debian/rules’]
> > would also result in a change from the original upstream source. No?
>
> No. dpkg-source just spits a warning when a file is deleted from
> original source. This is what I did in (python-)execnet.

Okay. I've tried this technique and it does indeed result in:

    dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt

and Lintian no longer complains about the file.

> SOURCES.txt gets recreated during build process (by setup.py). So it
> is in the .deb.

Right. So, the ideal solution would be for the build tool (Setuptools or
its successor Distribute) to stop modifying source files during the
build.

Failing that, is there a more general solution we Debian package
maintainers can implement? Is there a sensible modification to the
Debhelper tools that would help?

For example, could ‘python-support’ save and restore the modified file?
Could ‘dh_auto_clean’ remove the file? Something else?

-- 
 \     “To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, |
  `\            and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.” |
_o__)                                                —Bertrand Russell |
Ben Finney