A cool tool called lintian
As an ex-Debian-developer I'd like to introduce a tool only few Debian
maintainers seem to know about:
lintian
It's e.g. described in Chapter 7 of the "Debian New Maintainers' Guide"
[1] and there's a server that runs daily lintian over all (i386)
packages [2].
lintian does not catch all errors and sometimes lintian is wrong, but
it's a good way to start to check your package.
An example:
lintian.debian.org lists 136 packages with
package-lacks-versioned-build-depends-on-debhelper.
Description of this lintian error:
If a package sets debhelper's compatibility version to >= 1, either
via DH_COMPAT, or via debian/compat, or via dh_testversion (which
is deprecated), it must declare a versioned Build-Depends on the
needed version of debhelper.
To version the build dependency on debhelper is in this case perhaps
more over-correct than actual needed but it doesn't do any harm and I'd
expect a Debian developer to version the build dependency if he sees
such a lintian error.
There are more serious lintian errors like missing-depends-line (nine
packages - nine RC bugs). If the maintainer would have used lintian
these bugs would have never existed.
cu
Adrian
BTW: I'm not subscribed to debian-devel
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ch-checkit.en.html
[2] http://lintian.debian.org
--
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of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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