Bug#840094: blends-dev: Does not recognize multiline dependencies
Hi Andreas & all,
On 09.11.2016 15:35, Andreas Tille wrote:
>> We have a clear definition of how these files should look like, namely
>> RFC822, and this also defines continuation lines.
>
> Unfortunately in this specific feature tasks files are not RFC822
> compliant, which sucks, yes. Its even not documented (I just checked
> since I intended to document it at some point in time but can't find it
> :-( )
If one of our main tools is not compliant with our documented
specifications, and this may cause incomplete metapackages (which are
one central part of the blend), then I would still rate this as an RC
bug, independently of whether it is easy to fix or not.
>> I would think that there is also a quick fix for it -- the tool already
>> handles continuation lines for the tasks description, so one could
>> probably just take that. I have no glue of all the Perl $@^!~ special
>> chars, but wouldn't do it something like the attached patch (after
>> removing the obvious errors from it)?
>>
>> Or something else just adopted from lines 556-562 of blends-gen-control?
>
> While I fully agree that we should fix this I'm not fully convinced how
> to sensibly proceed here. The problematic thing is that we are quite
> short before a release and if we might break metapackage creation in
> some way we might get in trouble. I'm no Perl programmer myself (even
> if I think your patch looks sensible) and so IMHO staying conservative
> and add some line ending escapes could be the less invasive change.
I checked my patch, and it does *not* work correctly, it will produce
syntax errors in the debian/control file, if RFC822 continuation lines
are used. For tasks that have all in one line, or that have
metapackages, everything seems to be OK, however.
> If you (and Bas and other readers here) think we should fix the issue
> right now I'm fine if you apply the patch below and we should seriously
> test the metapackage creation of each Blend *before* 2016-12-05.
>
> What do you think?
I am ready to test and also to fix; however my know-how ends here. I
don't know what is wrong with the fix.
Just wondering, and starting to really get worried: None of the
debian-blends maintainers has enough Perl knowledge to fix this? If we
all do not know Perl, why do we use that language in one of our central
tools? That sounds to me even more RC than the bug itself...
Cheers
Ole
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