Re: lintian-brush adds redundant data
Hi Andreas,
On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 08:47:51AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 04:46:23PM +0000, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 04:17:50PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > > I observed that lintian-brush is adding a file debian/upstream/metadata
> > > if it finds the fields Upstream-Name and Upstream-Contact in
> > > debian/copyright.
> >
> > > What is the sense to duplicate data that we can find in a well
> > > established machine readable file in another file?
> > That's a good question.
> >
> > I've considered (but not implemented yet) having lintian-brush not create a
> > debian/upstream/metadata if the only upstream metadata fields it can set are
> > the name and contact.
>
> It would be really great to implement this. Considering the current
> situation I would even remove the fields Name and Contact from
> debian/upstream/metadata if the according fields are in debian/copyright
> (or move them if they are missing in d/copyright). If some empty
> d/u/metadata remains this should be removed as well.
>
> IMHO a good rule of thumb is: Do not copy any data from some well
> established machine readable file to some other place.
Agreed, having data duplicated in two Debian-specific files seems unnecessary and bad.
> > At the moment, both the debian/copyright [1] and debian/upstream/metadata [2]
> > standards both define two fields with (as far as I can tell) the same purpose.
> > Neither of the standards provide any guidance as to whether the fields
> > should be set in both files or whether e.g. one is preferred over the other.
> > It would be great if some guidance could be added to DEP-12 about how to deal
> > with these fields.
>
> DEP-12 is declared as "Work in progress" (without any progress since 5
> years) while DEP-5 is well established and decided. Charles and I
> invented d/u/metadata to store publication information and it turned out
> that there is other sensible information about upstream that can be
> stored there as well. I'd vote against any duplication of information
> in any way. So as long as Name and Contact are defined in DEP-5 it
> should not be in DEP-12.
> So far I removed redundant fields from the Wiki page[3] (it had also
> Homepage, Watch and others I might have forgot) since it simply adds
> useless maintenance burden to maintain the same information at different
> places.
Thanks for updating the specification.
I think longer term it would actually make sense to put this information in
debian/upstream/metadata rather than debian/copyright, so all upstream metadata
is in one place - but that would obviously require a change to DEP-5 first.
> The idea that lintian is warning about those fields missing in
> d/u/metadata is not sensible, neither that some tool adds the values.
> It was some Wiki edit away[4] to ensure you about this that this stuff
> is really in flux and its better to not waste time on this without
> discussing it first.
>
> I'd be really happy if lintian-brush would remove those values (please
> let me know if you want me to file a bug report about this).
I've implemented this. lintian-brush will attempt to update these
fields in debian/copyright only and remove them from debian/upstream/metadata.
Please let me know if you have any other suggestions.
Cheers,
Jelmer
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