Bug#857123: lintian: warning about missing classpath is confusing

[Markus Koschany <apo@debian.org>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.50.1
Severity: normal

Hi,

I think the Lintian warning about a "missing classpath" in Java
libraries and applications is not very helpful at the moment.
Newcomers and even seasoned Java developers are either confused by it
or simply ignore it thus its usefulness is greatly diminished.

The problem is that the current check does not take different build
systems like Maven or Gradle into account and was probably created
with Javahelper and Ant in mind. Especially when Maven takes care of
calculating the classpath it is not always necessary to declare the
classpath manually. So Lintian's assumption is not correct that a
missing Class-Path entry in the jar's manifest file automatically
means that the dependency is not needed or one of the JARs should
include a classpath.

I suggest to remove this Lintian tag or lower the severity from
warning to info.

Regards,

Markus