On Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:00:55 +0200 Jakub Wilk wrote: > * Francesco Poli <invernomuto@paranoici.org>, 2012-09-11, 22:07: [...] > >Do you disagree that this is a false positive for the lintian check? > >Why? > > To me, the tag servers two purposes: > 1) In the rare cases where the changelog exists, but I frogot to install > it to the binary package, it reminds me that I should do it. > 2) In the more common cases where the changelog does not exist, it > reminds me that I should ask upstream to start writing one. This was not my reading of the tag description... It says: N: The package does not install an upstream changelog file. If upstream N: provides a changelog, it should be accessible as N: /usr/share/doc/<pkg>/changelog.gz. Then it discusses the unclear case of multiple binary packages (which is not my concern here) and finally refers me to Policy 12.7 (Changelog files). The Policy again explains that "If an upstream changelog is available, it should be accessible [...]", but does not mandate anything for the cases where no upstream changelog is available. Asking upstream to start writing a changelog is of course a nice idea, but the Policy does not require Debian package maintainers to do so. Hence, I didn't interpret the tag as you seem to do. My reading was that lintian was telling me that an upstream changelog exists, but it somehow failed to be installed in the Debian binary package. But this was not the case. > > So yes, from my perspective it's not a false positive. [...] > (Note: this is my personal opinion. I'm not a Lintian maintainer.) [...] Well, I'll leave this to the lintian maintainers to decide. If my interpretation is the intended one, then I think that this lintian check should be triggered *only* when a non-empty upstream changelog is indeed present in the upstream source archive, but is not properly installed in the Debian binary package. On the other hand, if Jakub's interpretation is the intended one, then I think that the tag description should say something about the absent upstream changelog case, before discussing the multiple binary package case. Something along the lines of: N: If upstream does not provide any meaningful changelog, you should get N: in touch with them and persuade them to start providing one. This is my own take on this issue. I hope it helps to improve lintian... Bye. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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