Bug#612610: lintian: should suggest switching to 3.0 (quilt)
On 2013-04-09 09:23, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Thanks for this interesting discussion. I think it's an important one to
> have, too.
>
Hi,
> Generally speaking, Debian needs a way to promote best practices,
> because there *are* practices that are better than others and uniforming
> on them is a way to both improve the quality of our maintenance work and
> reduce barriers to contributions [...].
>
I am inclined to agree on this.
> [...] What we do want to be notified of best practices, is a sort
> of "test suite" that yells when we are not following them, as in test
> harness situations. I.e.: something very similar to lintian :-)
>
I can certainly relate to this.
> On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 01:28:29AM +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
>> I am not sure we can in general promote the use of 3.0 (quilt) over 1.0
>> via Lintian at the moment[1].
> […]
>> [1] Basically it is the same reasons as mentioned in #702671.
>
> If I'm not mistaken, that reason is the following, right?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> I agree, but that's not really the point -- the point, rather, was
>> that several long-time DDs responded to the suggestion that it become
>> mandatory with quite a bit of outrage in debian-devel, and several
>> people said that they absolutely refused to add it.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Yes, that is part of it. For me, the second part of it is that Lintian
is only effective as long as "everybody" keeps using it. In more
detail, please see [1] (which I realise now was not mentioned in #702671).
> [...]
> Second, the part "long-time DDs" is questionable, as their opinion is not
> necessarily more valuable than those of others. It *could* very much be,
> due to experience and capacities, but old-timers tend also to be much
> more inclined to stay put with old practices, which are not necessarily
> the best ones.
While I agree with this one, it does not help us if Lintian starts to
alienate the "long-time DDs" - it will only weaken our ability to spread
these best practises(see above or [1]).
> [...]
>
> Personally, I'd love if the lintian maintainers could assume their
> responsibility as promoting the adoption of best-practices. After all,
> it is you people who are the first steward of package quality, thanks to
> lintian.
I do not mind having checks for best practises in Lintian or even
writing some of them. Perhaps with an "lintian-style" package or
something like that (see [2]) so people can opt-in/opt-out accordingly.
Also, even if we (i.e. the Lintian maintainers) don't end up doing it,
the coming release of Lintian is expected to close #359059 so the task
can "trivially" be delegated to another body.
People interested in this can even start working now. I am aware of
at least two people/groups who were recently working on their own
third-party checks[3].
> [...] if I will ever find myself in disagreement I
> can either stop using lintian (with all the associated negative quality
> consequences), [...]
>
> [...]
> Hope this helps,
> Cheers.
>
I know I mentioned it (twice) already, but see [1] for why I believe we
should avoid putting package maintainers in a position where they would
consider that.
~Niels
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2012/01/msg00034.html
Particularly:
"""
I care most about all of the regular Debian developers [...] continuing
to use Lintian, so that Lintian can stay as effective as it is now at
getting people to make archive-wide changes.
"""
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2010/08/msg00012.html
[3] Example being ARB:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bhavi/ubuntu-app-review-board/lintian-arb_profile/changes
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