Bug#550924: lintian: direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system indirectly suggests to create files by patch.

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.2.17
> Severity: normal
>
> Hello Lintian maintainers,
>
> I just got the direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system pedantic
> warning in the (non-free) clustalw package, that contains extra files
> for the user's service: the upstream changelog and some test data.
>
> Originally they were placed at the root of the upstream sources, and
> in reaction to the Lintian message, I moved them to the debian
> directory. After reading the related #471263 bug, I think that it is
> the best compromise.
>
> The reason why I opened this bug is that what I did is not what is
> suggested by the Lintian message, which would rather induce people to
> ship extra files as a patch. To avoid people using this unnecessarly
> complicated way, I would like to suggest the following addition to the
> explanations of the Lintian tag:
>
> â??In case your diff.gz is used to create new files, please consider
> moving them inside the debian directory if possible.â??
>
> Have a nice day,

I believe there are two use cases here:

1) Add extra files to the debian package

For example you add /etc/init.d/package or some default conffile or
manpage or whatever. None of those are needed during build and are
just copied along into the debian package. I believe yours is just
such a case and they belong in the debian dir.

2) Add extra files to the source

This might be premade configure and Makefile.in files or similar that
are needed during build. They can not reside anywhere but where they
are. In those cases a patch system is better.

MfG
        Goswin