Hi! I stumbled upon a set of packages, all with some common errors, and I'm about to file a largish number of bugs about these. Provided that the general opinion is that it is justified. Below, I'll try to summarise what I found, categorised by type of the bug. debian/copyright problems ========================= In the following packages, debian/copyright does not include a verbatim copy of their copyright and distribution license, nor any pointers to /usr/share/common-licenses/{Artistic,GPL} or /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright. Since including a verbatim copy of the _whole_ license (with the exception that in case of the GPL and some other selected licenses, for which a pointer is enough) is a must, I believe this is at least an important bug. So, the packages with this kind of problem: libapache-db-perl, libbusiness-onlinepayment-perl, libcrypt-hcesha-perl, libdate-pcalc-perl, libdbix-datasource-perl, libdbix-dbschema-perl, libdbix-profile-perl, libdbix-searchbuilder-perl, libdns-zonerparse-perl, libfile-rsync-perl, libhtml-widgets-selectlayers-perl, libhttp-browserdetect-perl, liblog-dispatch-perl, libmldbm-sync-perl, libnet-scp-perl, libnet-ssh-perl, libstring-approx-perl, libtext-wrapper-perl, libtie-ixhash-perl, libtime-duration-perl. binary-arch VS Arch: all ======================== Some of the packages are fully Architecture: all, yet, they build the .deb in the binary-arch target. Since policy states that `binary-arch' builds the binary packages which are specific to a particular architecture, and `binary-indep' builds those which are not. I consider this a policy violation, therefore a serious bug. (Hint: one shouldn't follow the dh_make template blindly. A little thought is always a good thing.) The list of victims, who were caught to do this: libbusiness-creditcard-perl, libbusiness-onlinepayment-perl, libcrypt-hcesha-perl, libdate-pcalc-perl, libdbix-datasource-perl, libdbix-dbschema-perl, libdbix-profile-perl, libdbix-searchbuilder-perl, libdns-zoneparse-perl, libfile-rsync-perl, libfreezethaw-perl, libhtml-widgets-selectlayers-perl, libhttp-browserdetect-perl, liblog-dispatch-perl, libmldbm-sync-perl, libnet-scp-perl, libnet-ssh-perl, libterm-query-perl, libtext-wrapper-perl, libtie-ixhash-perl, libtime-duration-perl, libarray-printcols-perl, libbind-confparser-perl. README.Debian vs debian/copyright ================================= Some of the packages have information in README.Debian that belongs to debian/copyright. For example, the name of the maintainer who put the package together. (Policy says that debian/copyright should mention the Debian maintainer) Since this is only a should in policy, I'd consider this wishlist or normal bugs. Probably wishlist only. The affected packages: libapache-db-perl, libbusiness-creditcard-perl, libbusiness-onlinepayment-perl, libcrypt-hcesha-perl, libdate-pcalc-perl, libdbix-datasource-perl, libdbix-dbschema-perl, libdbix-searchbuilder-perl, libdns-zoneparse-perl, libfile-rsync-perl, libfreezethaw-perl, libhtml-widgets-selectlayer-perl, libhttp-browserdetect-perl, liblog-dispatch-perl, libmldbm-sync-perl, libnet-scp-perl, libnet-ssh-perl, libstring-approx-perl, libterm-query-perl, libtext-wrapper-perl, libtie-ixhash-perl, libtime-duration-perl, libbind-confparser-perl, libarray-printcols-perl. libdbix-profile-perl has this problem also, and its README.Debian includes a brief summary of changes made to the upstream sources. According to policy, these should also go to debian/copyright. Spurious files ============== The packages listed below contain files which were automatically generated at build time, and weren't cleaned properly. libdbix-datasource-perl (contains Makefile and Makefile.old, built from Makefile.PL) libdbix-profile-perl (contains Makefile and Makefile.old) libnet-scp-perl (contains debian/substvars) Since these are Arch: all packages, they won't get rebuilt by autobuilders, and these files won't cause any problems. In other cases, they might be harmless too, I didn't check. But they should be cleaned anyway, so this warrants a normal bug in my opinion. Other things I'd nitpick about ============================== Among other things, many of the packages mentioned above contain "Emacs local variables" in debian/copyright, which is discouraged, and afaik lintian warns about it. I might file a minor bug about those too. Well, that is it for today. Because I'm tired and have better things to do, I won't rant about the quality of these packages now. Cheers, -- Gergely Nagy
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