Bug#748405: lintian: [new check] Check all files in debian directory for trailing spaces

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.22.1
Severity: wishlist

Hi!

I'm a very active sponsor of packages that Debian maintainers upload to
Debian Mentors (mentors.debian.net) for review and upload to the
archives.

As of that, I have seen many packages and found a minor but very
common annoyance which are trailing spaces in files found in the
debian directory. These trailing spaces can be easily spotted
with editors like emacs which display those by default when editing
changelog files which show these as red blocks. I'm attaching a
screenshot where I intentionally added several trailing spaces to
the changelog of one of my own packages.

It would therefore be great if lintian could issue a warning if it
found trailing spaces in any of the files located in the debian
directory.

Cheers,

Adrian

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.14-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                       2.24.51.20140425-1
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-5
ii  diffstat                       1.58-1
ii  file                           1:5.18-1
ii  gettext                        0.18.3.2-1
ii  hardening-includes             2.5
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.1
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29+b1
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.37-2
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.36-1
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.17.9
ii  libemail-valid-perl            1.193-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.03-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.92-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.33-2
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-1
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.09-1
ii  libtimedate-perl               2.3000-2
ii  liburi-perl                    1.60-1
ii  man-db                         2.6.7.1-1
ii  patchutils                     0.3.3-1
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.18.2-4
ii  t1utils                        1.37-2

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  libautodie-perl                 2.25-1
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl             0.18-2
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.18.2-4

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch     <none>
ii  dpkg-dev               1.17.9
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-1+b1
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.46-1
pn  libyaml-perl           <none>
ii  xz-utils               5.1.1alpha+20120614-2

-- no debconf information