Bug#485705: lintian: doesn't properly detect comma in control file email address quoted strings

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@debian.org> writes:

> Package: lintian
> Version: 1.24.0
> Severity: minor
>
> Greetings,
>
> An email address in a control field, e.g. Uploaders, should work with a
> comma in a quoted string, such as of the form:
>   "Smith, John" <john.smith@gmail.com>
> See for example RFC822 Appendix A.1.3.

Policy doesn't specify that Uploaders is an RFC 2822 From header.  It's
not an unreasonable desire that it be so specified, but so far as I know,
nothing in Debian that parses those fields implements a full RFC 2822 From
parser, and Uploaders containing commas breaks other software as well.

I think this requires a Policy change before Lintian knows which way to
jump.  If this is supposed to be an RFC 2822 From header, Policy should
say so.  Currently, Policy says:

    List of the names and email addresses of co-maintainers of the
    package, if any. If the package has other maintainers beside the one
    named in the Maintainer field, their names and email addresses should
    be listed here. The format is the same as that of the Maintainer tag,
    and multiple entries should be comma separated.

which if anything says that the current behavior of Lintian and other
tools is correct, as there's nothing there about it being possible to
escape commas.

This problem is new with Uploaders; since Maintainer doesn't take a list,
it was never ambiguous.  Commas in names have never worked for Uploaders
since the introduction of the feature so far as I know.

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