Re: Entries in Packages files that lack a Source field

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Adeodato Simó <asp16@alu.ua.es> writes:

> * Anthony Towns [Thu, 19 May 2005 15:38:11 +1000]:
>> Adeodato Simó wrote:
>> >  As you probably know, entries in the Packages file only have a Source
>> >  field if the name of the source package is different from the name of
>> >  the binary package being described. This is an inconsistency that makes
>> >  it a bit harder to massage this data, e.g. with grep-dctrl.
>
>> Why not add a patch to grep-dctrl instead?
>
>   grep-dctrl was only meant an example: every script or whatever parsing
>   Packages files will have to deal with that inconsistency (in the case
>   of a Perl or similar script, it's less cumbersome that with grep-dctrl, 
>   that's true). Fixing apt-ftparchive solves the issue for everybody,
>   hence what I was looking to know is if there is a reason for which the
>   current behavior of apt-ftparchive should not be changed.
>
>   Cheers,

apt-ftparchive can't reliably fix this as it breaks for binary
NMUs. The right place is to tackle this on the dpkg level and always
include the Sources entry in the control and changes files.

Should be a trivial patch to dpkg-gencontrol to always add the field
and a simple patch to add binary NMU support.

MfG
        Goswin