Bug#526713: lintian: vcs-field-uses-unknown-uri-format should handle multi-line fields
Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:
> This is no longer the case. Starting from policy 3.7.0 (see
> /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.txt.gz) all fields
> are:
> - on a logical single line ...
> - ... that can be split over several _physical_ lines
upgrading-checklist is not canonical and tends to take short cuts in
wording. It's really intended just to provide pointers to the sections
that you want to re-read. Section 5.1 says:
Many fields' values may span several lines; in this case each
continuation line must start with a space or a tab. Any trailing
spaces or tabs at the end of individual lines of a field value are
ignored.
In fields where it is specified that lines may not wrap, only a
single line of data is allowed and whitespace is not significant in
a field body.
It's really up to each individual field to specify its continuation
handling. There are specific allowances in Policy for continuation
lines in relation fields and in Uploaders, but not elsewhere. You can't
wrap Architecture across multiple lines, for example.
Of course, Vcs-* isn't in Policy at all, so you can't tell for sure by
reading Policy whether they support wrapping, which is why I was
wondering about the status of the tools.
(I'd really like to see Vcs-* standardized in Policy so that we have
some place to look for questions like this.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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