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Bug#339829: Lintian home page check



On Sun, Mar 26, 2006 at 05:14:39PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Hello folks,
> 
> Since I just spent some time looking over the discussion and the patch in
> lintian bug #339829 to check for the Homepage information in the
> description of packages and decided not to apply it, I figured I should
> let you know why it made me uncomfortable.  This doesn't mean that another
> lintian maintainer won't apply it; it's just a personal opinion.
> 
> I know a lot of people are using this (and I even include it on my own
> packages), but putting meta-information in a specific format in a
> free-form text field is fundamentally a bad idea.  Creating a new URL
> control header that package management software and other scripts can read
> and parse and that has a standardized format is the right thing to do.
> Checking for URLs in package descriptions with messy heuristics that one
> would have to override if lintian gets the check wrong provokes a bit of
> an "ew" reaction.
> 
> I really think the effort would be better spent standardizing an optional
> URL field in Policy so that people can start using that, package build
> tools can be updated where necessary to handle it, and package viewing and
> installation tools can start to look for it.  In the meantime, packagers
> can start using XBS-URL right now and the right thing will happen.
> 
> It doesn't seem like this would be that controversial and the dpkg format
> was designed to be extensible in this fashion.  I don't see an open Policy
> bug on the issue.  I'd rather see people pursue that direction instead.
I don't actually disagree, but afaik the "dpkg doesn't have a homepage
field" thing has been around forever now..  And the DevRef mentions
this best-practice, which essentially nobody knows about.  I think its
ugly, actually, and you're right, but would like whatever the the
"best practices" are to actually be followed, implemented, and
realized.

Justin



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