Bug#471263: [patch-systems]: please no patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff for generated files
Daniel Leidert <daniel.leidert@wgdd.de> writes:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 1.23.46
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Please consider docbook-defguide and docbook-xml/docbook-simple as
> examples. In these packages I created a build-system (docbook-defguide)
> or catalogs (docbook-xml, docbook-simple). Because I use a patch system
> to change upstream sources, lintian complains about the fact, that I do
> not create these files by patch.
>
> It simply doesn't make sense to create these files by patch.
Why not?
> lintian should only warn, if changes are really changes to an existing
> file, but not if "change" means, that a file has been created.
I can see why you did it the way that you did, but I don't see any clear
advantages over doing it that way versus creating the build files in a
dpatch. It seems like about the same thing to me. Not warning about
newly created files would miss some of the things that this check is
designed to look for (basically, editing the package without being aware
that there's an existing patch system). If a patch created a file and
that file was also shipped in the diff, you end up putting the patch
system in an inconsistent state.
Part of the problem is that people use patch systems in a wide variety of
sometimes odd ways. To some extent, lintian is intentionally being
conservative right now about what uses it's willing to be quiet about,
although I don't know if we'll be able to stick with that in the long run.
> Would you agree to this? Is it possible to exclude created files from
> this warning? I would further vote for excluding
> changes.{sub,guess,rpath} and maybe even Makefiles and/or configure
> scripts from this test. However, this is hust an optional suggestion.
I personally think such changes should be made by running the relevant
Autotools at build time, but I realize this is an ongoing debate and
that's far from the consensus at the moment. I think we're still trying
to feel out what Lintian's role should be here. I'd welcome any feedback
from other people reading the mailing list.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: