Lintian and menu files - a bug?

[p@dirac.org (Peter Jay Salzman)]

Dear Lintian maintainers,

Yadex is a program that starts in a terminal, but to do anything useful, it
eventually puts up its own x11 window.

This means that you start yadex in a terminal, but the terminal must be an
x-terminal-emulator, otherwise, when you go to do something useful, you'll
get a "cannot open the display" error.

The yadex package lists "xterm | x-terminal-emulator" as a dependency.  You
cannot usefully use this program without an x-terminal-emulator.


Given all that, debian/yadex.menu is:

   ?package(yadex): needs="x11" section="Games/Arcade" title="yadex" \
      hints="Doom,3D" command="x-terminal-emulator -e /usr/games/yadex"

Which generates a lintian warning, because the yadex package doesn't itself
provide x-terminal-emulator.  I believe this is a bug.  There's no policy
that says that "command" must only refer to executables provided by the
package itself.

In fact, it's reasonable that it *should* be policy that "command" must only
refer to executables provided by:

   * the package itself, and
   * any packages listed as a dependency

because of the very definition of "dependency".

Is there any way you would you consider changing lintian so that "command" in
menu files can refer to executables provided by dependency packages?

Thanks!
Pete

-- 
The mathematics of physics has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's "Fearful Symmetry"

GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E  70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D