Bug#697565: lintian: dsc field original-maintainer is unknown to, lintian

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On 2013-01-08 19:22, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net> writes:
> 
>> No we do not atm.  We could create a profile that is good starting point
>> for derivatives, but I am not sure how to make it a default profile for
>> derivatives without their own profile (with special casing).
> 
> Another interesting way to approach this would be to create a profile for
> Debian that removes that as a recognized header.  I'm not sure if that
> makes sense or not, though.
> 

Interesting proposal, though I cannot see how to use it to improve the
situation.  By default (i.e. without any --profile option or
LINTIAN_PROFILE), we will use Dpkg::Vendor to find the profile.  So the
loading looks something like:

  <derivative>/main
  [... <parent>/main ...]
  debian/main

Concretely for Ubuntu, the vendor load sequence looks like:

  ubuntu/main (succeeds)
  debian/main (not checked because the above is present)

So, if there is a profile for the vendor profile, Lintian DTRT and loads
the derivatives profile.  Otherwise it will load the debian/main
profile, which is the "default" profile Debian.
  So either it will not recognise the "original-maintainer" field (which
we want for Debian) or it will recognise said field (which we want for
derivatives).

At least that is my understanding of the situation right now.  I am sure
we can do something about it, but I'd like to avoid special casing if
possible.

~Niels