Re: lintian -- detecting hundrets of bugs within seconds...
On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Joey Hess wrote:
> Christian Schwarz wrote:
> > Ok, now to the checks: Each check script reports lines of the following
> > format:
> >
> > N: <verbose text for the user>
> > W: <pkg>: <tag> <arguments>
> > E: <pkg>: <tag> <arguments>
> >
> > E: logwrites: pkg-without-shlibs-has-shlibs-control-file
> >
> > -> Policy violation: Package `logwrites' does not contain any shared
> > libraries, but has a `shlibs' control file.
>
> I think it'd be useful to include in the output a reference to the
> appropriate section of the policy manaul. This makes it easy to go read the
> policy, without a long explination. (Also, lose the '-'s, they make it hard
> to read!)
Of course! The one-line format with the tags (pkg-without-shlibs...) is
just used internally. That's how the different lintian scripts
`communicate.'
I'm started to work on the bug reporting layer of lintian. That's a set of
scripts which take these one-liners as input file and generate a bunch of
bug reports (replacing the tags with some text quoting policy, giving
examples, etc.), checks how bug reports evolve, etc.
> BTW, I was earlier looking into making the policy manual a literate
> programming document that generated a lint checker and the policy
> manual. I never got very far with it, but I wonder if you've givn any
> thought to that?
No, I didn't think of this yet. I guess it will be too much work, since
in case of the checker script, it's not the developer who wants to read
the script, but the computer :-)
BTW, here is a very dangerous part of lintian: With lintian, some people
may think they don't need to read the policy manual(s) since lintian knows
everything already. But obviously, lintian can't check for everything!
(E.g., lintian will never parse the /usr/doc/foo/copyright file and check
if it's DFSG compliant ;-)
To avoid this to happen, I'm thinking of marking the policy sections with
some flag ("CHECKED", or so) that are checked automatically by lintian.
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
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