Bug#456515: lintian: Undesirable spelling warning on changelog entries describing spelling fixes

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Andreas Hoenen <andreas.hoenen@arcor.de> writes:

> Okay, thanks for the hint, fixing the spelling and logging it in
> changelog:
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>   * debian/copyright:
>     + Fix spelling: publically -> publicly
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> But now lintian warns about my changelog entry:
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> W: dblatex: spelling-error-in-changelog publically publicly
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Yeah, I was worried about this but I couldn't figure out any good way to
fix it beyond just recommending that people say "Fix spelling of publicly"
instead without reproducing the spelling error in the changelog entry.

I agree that you should be able to do that, but it's hard to teach lintian
to be smart enough to realize that's what you're doing.

> One could think either about a pattern that disables spell checking for
> the current changelog line, or about skipping the spelling checks on
> changelog at all (which seems to be one opinion expressed in BTS thread
> #36017).

I do think that the changelog should be spell-checked.  The concern in
#36017 (as I read it) was that we not use a regular spell-checker that
would give a ton of false positives on technical language and idiom, and I
also don't want people to fix spelling in all the historical entries, but
I think it's reasonable to check the current entry for common spelling
errors.

The current spelling check isn't line-based, but maybe we could make it a
bit smarter so that it ignores spelling errors in the changelog entry if
the word "spelling" occurs on the same line.  This won't catch all cases
like yours, but might reduce false positives.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>