Re: 2 lintian v2.5.10.2ubuntu2.1 problems
Daniel Pfeiffer <occitan@t-online.de> writes:
> la 2013-01-08 01:02 Russ Allbery skribis:
>> This is covered in the section of Policy that you point to:
>> Those starting with a single space are part of a
>> paragraph. Successive lines of this form will be word-wrapped when
>> displayed. The leading space will usually be stripped off. The
>> line must contain at least one non-whitespace character.
> Somewhat ambiguous. From this I can't see that long lines should be
> forbidden, as lintian tries to impose,
Lintian doesn't try to impose it (that would be an error, not a warning).
It just recommends it, which is why it uses the word "recommended" and
includes a rationale for the recommendation.
W: extended-description-line-too-long
N:
N: One or more lines in the extended part of the "Description:" field
N: have been found to contain more than 80 characters. For the benefit of
N: users of 80x25 terminals, it is recommended that the lines do not
N: exceed 80 characters.
N:
N: Refer to Debian Policy Manual section 3.4.1 (The single line synopsis)
N: for details.
N:
N: Severity: normal, Certainty: certain
It's generally more convenient for other developers who are working on the
package, or when reading the raw Packages file for some reason, to have
the paragraphs wrapped at 80x25. (Among other things, a lot of people
edit debian/control in editors that will automatically wrap edited text
that's over 80 columns, and may or may not get that wrapping syntactically
correct in debian/control extended descriptions.)
I wonder if this should be in the Developers Reference in section 6.2.3.
The reference to Policy there is for the mechanisms of word wrapping, not
for a Policy requirement that the field be wrapped. (There is, in fact,
no such Policy requirement; it's just a best practice.)
> nor that multiple such lines should be together wrapped into one
> paragraph. The wrapping sentence to me suggest that they will be
> wrapped individually, which is what synaptic implements.
I guess I can see how it could be read that way. Feel free to open a bug
against debian-policy if you want it reworded. The intention is
definitely that all lines within a paragraph be wrapped together provided
that none of them are indented by more than one space.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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