Bug#642833: Hmm, config-edit can be improved

[Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>]

* Dominique Dumont <dod@debian.org>, 2011-09-27, 16:21:
> > I was always under the impression that order of fields within a single 
> > paragraph doesn't matter in Debian control files.
>
> Correct. But if you add "Extra fields", you may end up in trouble.
>
> Consider the following (admitedly contrived) copyright paragraph:
>
> Files: this license applies to any of them
> License: GPL-1+
> GPL-1+ yada yada
>
> Is it:
> - a "Files" paragraph with a License field ?
> - a "License" paragraph with an extra "Files" field ?
>
> As a human, I have an idea. But I don't know how a parser can resolve 
> such ambuguity.

Yes, there is ambiguity; perhaps DEP-5 wording can be improved here.  
But, as you said, this example is contrived, and I don't see it as a 
practical problem.

FWIW, lintian uses this algorithm to determine type of a paragraph:

if it's not the header paragraph {
   if Files field exists {
     it's a files paragraph
   } elsif License field exists {
     it's a stand-alone license paragraph
   } else {
     it's a unknown paragraph type, emit a warning
   }
}

--
Jakub Wilk