Re: GSoC status: classification, output format and more

[Jordà Polo <jorda@ettin.org>]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 07:40:29PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> In that world, there are a whole pile of tags in Lintian right now that
> have no Ref information at all.  These tags fall roughly into the
> following categories:
> 
> * Tags we issue for things that are just obviously broken, even if not
>   specifically mentioned in any document.  Example:
>   library-in-debug-or-profile-should-not-be-stripped
> 
> * "You're doing it wrong" sorts of errors based on the documentation of
>   the program used.  This may be the same sort of case.  Example:
>   dh_testversion-is-deprecated
> 
> * Tags for something that someone noticed is usually a warning sign that
>   there's something broken about the package even though it in and of
>   itself is not a violation of any document.  (This may be the same thing
>   as the previous one, but a lower severity.)  Example:
>   library-not-linked-against-libc
> 
> * Best practices and style issues that aren't specifically mentioned in
>   any document but seem to be the consensus of the project.  Example:
>   debug-file-should-use-detached-symbols or diff-contains-cvs-control-dir.
>   In many cases, these possibly should be added to the devref, but it's
>   often easier to add a check to Lintian than write up text and find a
>   document into which to put it.
> 
> * Tags from random other documents that don't produce enough tags to be a
>   very good selection criteria.  Example: syntax-error-in-symbols-file

I made an initial classification of tags with no Ref information,
approximately following your categories. I wasn't sure about the first
two categories, so I kind of joined them. On the other hand, I added new
references where possible and didn't find many tags of the last
category. The result is available here[1].

> My guess is that we have as many tags without Ref as with, and while in
> some cases that's an oversight, in many cases there just isn't a
> reference.

Your guess was surprisingly accurate ;)

301 of 713 tags had a Ref in Lintian 1.24.2. There are currently 312
tags with Ref, but I have a patch that introduces 46 new references to
manuals and manpages (waiting for the outcome of my previous patch to
improve references[2]). Since there are 716 tags, if the patch is
applied there will be exactly the same number of tags with and without
Ref: 358.

> So the question is: is it worthwhile to break those into
> different categories for people to select, or do severities cover it?  I
> can see, for example, someone wanting to see the "this is obviously
> broken" tags but not the "best practice" tags.

But then, if the idea is to know how authoritative is the source, should
we should also cover URLs, manpages or even less known manuals?

This is also related to the "tags from random other documents"
category... Perhaps keywords could be used to override the
"authoritativeness" of other references if it is present.

> Right, I don't think adding a separate Source field is needed.  I like the
> idea of reusing Ref.  I'm just not sure if we should be adding a Ref:
> just-broken or Ref: best-practice sort of tag to the non-Ref tags we have
> now.

I'm not sure something like "Source: best-practice" is clear enough.
Even if it isn't directly displayed like that, it can be confusing for
people working on checks/*.desc files. Following the "manual section"
convention, something like "Source: lintian best-practice" could be used
to make it clear that it was a Lintian developer who decided how
authoritative that particular tag was. Certainly not needed, just an
idea to make it more understandable.

 1. http://ettin.org/tmp/lintian/sourcestats.out
 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2008/08/msg00068.html