Bug#574293: lintian: Add check for missing Vcs-* headers (experimental or pedantic)
Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:
> Please consider at least "X" (experimental), or maybe "I". I'm not sure
> what is the correct progression in severity: X, I, P ...?
> - By A.D 2010 this culd be a signal to maintainers (especially Debian) to
> encourage them to start using services like Alioth.
> - Sometimes, developer may have forgot to add Vcs-* headers, when lintian
> wasn't there to notify about them.
There are experienced and well-respected Debian developers who do not use
any VCS system (Clint Adams comes to mind from his recent blog post on the
topic). It's also common not to use a VCS system for QA work. Several
people have stated over the years that for many simple packages the
archive itself is an adequate VCS. Lintian is not intended to be a
mechanism for pushing practices that aren't already the general consensus
of the project.
> It could also be argued that messages like these are not useful:
> P: package: no-upstream-changelog
> The upstream could say that he sees no value of keeping ChangeLog for
> himself is if he's the sole developer and not participating in a team.
The purpose of that tag is to catch packaging where the packager forgot to
install the upstream changelog. It's certainty: wild-guess because, in
the cases where upstream supplies no changelog, there's nothing to do on
the Debian packaging side and the tag is a false positive.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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