maintainer field format (was Re: Automating the upload process)

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

Bruce said:

> > What's easy to provide is the contents of the "Maintainer:" field
> > from the control file from the first .deb package encountered.
>
> That's fine. In general the address in that field already works for mail,
> though the program has to understand old-format email addresses with angle
> brackets around them.

I noticed last night that "pgp -kg" says that the desired form for the
user ID is your name, followed by your E-mail address enclosed in angle
brackets.  I changed the MAINTAINER field in the dchanges control file
to conform to this.

What is the desired form of the maintainer field in control files?

I made dchanges(1) use the contents of the maintainer field from the
first .deb file encountered (as returned by "dpkg-deb --field ...")
for the userid when invoking pgp to sign the changes file.  That seemed
reasonable, and will require a key with that userid to exist on the
invoker's keyring.  Is this OK?