Bug#488832: lintian: Could check for missing update-desktop-database in maintainer scripts

[Cyril Brulebois <cyril.brulebois@kerlabs.com>]

Package: lintian
Version: 1.24.1
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

first, sorry Russ, I hope you won't find I'm trying to eat your time a
bit more with desktop files, but that check might be quite easy to
implement, and useful because of #439717 (cdbs not calling dh_desktop
but for the gnome.mk class).

Summary: dh_desktop is only needed so that the approriate
update-desktop-database call is added when there are some desktop files
embedding MimeTypes (see dh_desktop(1)).

I know there's already a check for missing dh_desktop call (#409138),
but it isn't triggered e.g. on the thunar source package
(thunar-data containing the following file:
/usr/share/thumbnailers/thunar-vfs-font-thumbnailer-1.desktop).

Looking at the source, the “unless ($includes) {” in check/rules
explains why the warning isn't shown for that particular package.

I think it would make a bit more sense to check for the actual contents
of the maintainers scripts for a missing update-desktop-database call
(that is: if there are .desktop files (under /usr/share only?) which
contain MimeTypes, and no occurrence of update-desktop-database in the
maintainer scripts), like (I believe) it's done for update-rc.d and the
like.

I might come with an implementation if you feel like it's a useful
check, and give me a go.

Mraw,
KiBi.