Bug#541491: lintian: Override for specific files in patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff

[Nathan Summers <rock@gimp.org>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.2.5ubuntu1
Severity: wishlist

The package I'm working on uses upstream sources, but upstream's build system is completely unsuitable for packaging purposes and is not included in the .orig.tar.gz.  While most of the custom build files are located in the debian/ directory, there are a few that have to be located outside of the debian/ directory.  Since I use dpatch, this triggers patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff.  I tried putting these files in a patch, but it lead to monstrocities like the clean target depending on patch, and it was difficult to maintain those files, since I would have to edit the patches every time I needed to change those files.

I would still like lintian to warn me about changes to other files that aren't in the patch system.  I tried to use overrides for patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff, but it appears that unlike some other lintian overrides, patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff is an all-or-nothing override.  I would like to be able to specify individual files that should not be warned about.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers jaunty-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'jaunty-updates'), (500, 'jaunty-security'), (500, 'jaunty')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-generic (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils              2.19.1-0ubuntu3    The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii  diffstat              1.46-1             produces graph of changes introduc
ii  dpkg-dev              1.14.24ubuntu1     Debian package development tools
ii  file                  4.26-2ubuntu4      Determines file type using "magic"
ii  gettext               0.17-6ubuntu2      GNU Internationalization utilities
ii  intltool-debian       0.35.0+20060710.1  Help i18n of RFC822 compliant conf
ii  libipc-run-perl       0.80-2             Perl module for running processes
ii  libparse-debianchange 1.1.1-2ubuntu1     parse Debian changelogs and output
ii  libtimedate-perl      1.1600-9           Time and date functions for Perl
ii  liburi-perl           1.37+dfsg-1ubuntu1 Manipulates and accesses URI strin
ii  man-db                2.5.5-1build1      on-line manual pager
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-p 5.10.0-19ubuntu1.1 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

lintian recommends no packages.

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch         <none>        (no description available)
pn  libtext-template-perl      <none>        (no description available)
ii  man-db                     2.5.5-1build1 on-line manual pager

-- no debconf information