Bug#514951: [checks/binaries] check the output of strings for typos and mistakes
Raphael Geissert <atomo64+debian@gmail.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> You have to run strings -a if you're going to implement that, at which
>> point I think chances are pretty high that you're going to get false
>> positives from the spell checking part.
> Not true; I've already tried without -a and successfully matched the zlib
> version string.
Hm, you hadn't mentioned that you were going to take that approach, and
that isn't the approach laid out in that bug report. The concern I have
there is false negatives on embedded versions of zlib that don't happen to
include the static version string. It seems like a fairly natural thing
to get rid of, and slightly modified versions of zlib are a common
problem. What specific string are you looking for?
We could try using both methods against the entire archive and make sure
they find the same thing.
> I checked many packages and didn't find any false positive. In any case,
> it could be implemented as an experimental check.
I'm okay with implementing it as an experimental check *if* we don't need
to use strings -a, but I'm not convinced that's the case.
(Basically, I just don't think this check is particularly important. It
has some minor benefits, but I think it's much less important than
accurately detecting embedded copies of zlib.)
> By the way, pusling mentioned on IRC that we should take care of telling
> the maintainer how to correctly fix the mistakes without fuzzing the
> translations. For this all is needed is fix the mistakes in the msgid's
> of the .po files as well.
I don't believe anything that Lintian currently spell-checks is
translated. I don't remember off-hand why we don't spell-check debconf
templates. I have some vague memory that it was for a specific reason,
not just because no one had thought of it, but I don't recall the reason.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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