Bug#464837: should warn about merciurial files

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> writes:

> package: lintian
> version: 1.23.44
>
> Hi,
>
> lintian doesnt warn about left over mercurial files in the source
> package, like it does with svn or cvs files.
>
> The following files remained unnoticed in my source package:
>
>  .hg_archival.txt                          |    2 
>  .hgignore                                 |   29 
>  .hgtags                                   |   10 

We intentionally don't warn about files like .hgignore in a source package
since they're normally intentionally shipped with the upstream source or
used by the Debian developer in their debian directory.  They're useful
version control metadata for anyone else who wants to reimport the package
into a version control system.

I'm not sure about .hg_archival.txt and .hgtags, though.  We do currently
warn about arch inventory files, so if this is a similar case, I can see
adding a similar warning about them.  But I'm hesitant to do so without a
clearer understanding of what the files are for and how someone would
normally avoid including them in the package.

Note that dpkg-source does not currently filter out any of these files
when the -i option is used, only the .hg metadata directory, so the
instructions for how to avoid them in diffs used for other files in the
source package wouldn't be accurate.

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