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Re: Lintian ERROR saying dpatch is obsolete



On 11/27/2011 06:22 PM, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> Hey,

Hi Marga

> Recently [1], dpatch's maintainer uploaded a new version indicating
> that dpatch is now deprecated.  Following that, he filed a bug [2] so
> that lintian might warn that dpatch's makefile has been deprecated
> since 2003, and that dpatch itself is now deprecated.  However, he
> also stated that he plans to keep dpatch for wheezy.

Keeping dpatch for wheezy seems logical as it will be very hard to get
all the packages migrated before the freeze.

> [1]: http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/dpatch/news/20111024T000209Z.html
> [2]: bugs.debian.org/646420
> 
> A week ago [3], a new lintian version was uploaded that gives an error
> if a package build-depends on dpatch, because it's 'obsolete'.

dpatch was added to the obsolete packages one can build depend on
apparently.

> [3] http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/lintian/news/20111121T230326Z.html
> 
> I find this a bit shocking, since an error with lintian tends to be
> quite a big deal, and there are currently more than a thousand
> packages that build-depend on dpatch. It's been only a month since the
> upload stating that it's deprecated, and it's still going to be there
> for wheezy... Wouldn't it be better to make it a warning now, and an
> error after wheezy is released?

This is non trivial as it would also affect the other obsolete build
dependencies as a starter.

Besides it would be great that everyone uploading has a big reminder to
switch away from dpatch. Switching to v3 quilt should be easy.

> I'm CCing debian-devel mainly so that other maintainers of 1087
> packages build-depending on dpatch find out about this deprecation.
> Finding out about it through a lintian error was quite surprising to
> me.

Right, it could have been better communicated. Thanks for bringing it up
on d-devel!

Personally I do think it does not harm that it's a lintian error instead
of a warning though.

Cheers

Luk


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