Bug#539066: lintian: [checks/shared-libs] misleading message for unknown dash-containing version in symbols file

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Lintian maintainers,

Last year, I wrote:
> Severity: wishlist

> Debian policy allows version numbers like 4.999.8beta-115-gadbad2d-1
> (<http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version>),
> which makes the symbols-file-contains-debian-revision check tricky.
> For example, lintian misdiagnoses the problem in the following symbols
> file:
> 
> liblzma.so.0 liblzma0 #MINVER#
>  lzma_alone_decoder@Base 4.999.8beta-111-g8f8ec94
>  ...
> 
> Lintian reports symbols-file-contains-debian-revision. How could it
> know otherwise? If no entry in debian/changelog has upstream version
> 4.999.8beta-111-g8f8ec94, for lack of better options Lintian assumes
> the -g8f8ec94 is a Debian revision.
> 
> Unfortunately, at least to this naive user, the result suggests that
> Lintian would not be happy with any version number with dashes in it.
> And that's just not true.

But I have had a change of heart.  Although it would be friendlier to
handle such versions well, the version number in question was better
replaced with a less dash-heavy one, and I suspect that in practice
that will almost always be the case.  So please close this bug or mark
it wontfix, or set the submitter to yourself if you want it fixed. :)

Kind regards,
Jonathan