Bug#540161: lintian: Check debian/compat for latest version

[Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> tags 540161 wontfix
> thanks
>
> Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:
>
>> Please add (informational?) check for, not up to date with, latest
>> version of debhelper.  There are two places to check:
>>
>>       debian/control::Build-depends
>>       debian/compat
>>
>> And example (should be 7, at time of writing):
>>
>>       Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5), autotools-dev, pkg-config, libgtk2.0-dev, libxml2-dev
>>
>> An example of content of file debian/compat:
>>
>>       5      
>
> This makes backports to oldstable pointlessly hard when the maintainer
> isn't using any of the newer features of the latest debhelper.  I have
> multiple packages that are staying at a compat level of 5 for backporting
> reasons.  compat level 5 is still fully supported.

Could you consider introducing new  "N:" category for "Notes". In this case
Lintian could inform:

N: new-debhelper-availabel (7; package uses 5)

Jari