Bug#732246: lintian: False positive for rc-version-greater-than-expected-version with "+dev" in version number

[Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.19
Severity: normal

Hi,

I'm developing a non-native package as both, Upstream and Debian package
maintainer.

It's common that I've not yet decided what will be the new upstream
version number and hence add "+dev" to the previous release's upstream
version number.

But in that case, lintian always considers this to be something like a
release candidate:

W: xen-tools: rc-version-greater-than-expected-version 4.4+dev > 4.4 (consider using 4.4~dev)

Both, the warning and especially the advice are wrong here.

Relevant changelog extracts causing this:

---snip---
xen-tools (4.4+dev-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * Apply patch by Adrian C. (anrxc) to allow to override hooks in
    /usr/share/xen-tools/*.d/ with hooks in /etc/xen-tools/hooks.d/.
    Thanks! (Also add /etc/xen-tools/hooks.d/ to debian/dirs.)
  * Ignore cover_db directory in t/perl-syntax.t.

 -- Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>  Sun, 15 Dec 2013 17:20:43 +0100

xen-tools (4.4-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
[…]
---snap---

I'd either exclude the "dev" suffix completely from that test or check
the second last changelog entry, if the "+" is justified.

There are even some upstream developers (namely zsh) who version real
release candidates as "$PREVIOUS_VERSION-test-$N". See for example
http://ftp-master.metadata.debian.org/changelogs/main/z/zsh/unstable_changelog
(This gave IIRC no lintian warning, maybe due to the used word "test",
but is close enough IMHO to be worth mentioned as second example.)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (900, 'testing'), (899, 'testing-proposed-updates'), (600, 'stable'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.12-trunk-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_DK.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                       2.24-2
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-5
ii  diffstat                       1.57-1
ii  file                           1:5.14-2
ii  gettext                        0.18.3.1-2
ii  hardening-includes             2.4
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.1
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29+b1
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.30-7
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.35-1
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.17.5
ii  libemail-valid-perl            1.192-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.03-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.92-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.33-1+b2
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-1
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.06~01-2
ii  libtimedate-perl               2.3000-1
ii  liburi-perl                    1.60-1
ii  man-db                         2.6.5-2
ii  patchutils                     0.3.2-3
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.18.1-5
ii  t1utils                        1.37-2

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  libautodie-perl                 2.21-1
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl             0.18-1+b3
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.18.1-5

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch     <none>
ii  dpkg-dev               1.17.5
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-1+b1
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.46-1
ii  xz-utils               5.1.1alpha+20120614-2

-- no debconf information