Bug#758425: lintian: add a check for outdated version constraints

[Johannes Schauer <j.schauer@email.de>]

Hi,

Quoting Raphael Hertzog (2014-08-29 22:17:43)
> When a library has a symbols file that has evolved over more than 2 releases
> (like libc6)... see /var/lib/dpkg/info/libc6:amd64.symbols it references
> versions as old as 2.2.5 when oldstable currently has 2.11.

Right.

> > compiling. The other is all other "versions of binary packages" because
> > they have to be associated to source packages but it cannot be known from
> > which version of a source package they build.
> 
> This is a wrong problem given that in the majority of the case a given binary
> package will only be produced by a single source package. The binary
> package might be referenced multiple times in some rare cases of binary packages
> moving between source packages but I hardly doubt that this is a serious
> problem for bootstrapping a new architecture. It doesn't happen that
> often.

If it is valued highly to even keep version constraints from before oldstable,
then I propose to:

 - only check the manual dependencies from debian/control (and not those
   generated by dpkg-shlibdeps because those are legit)

 - restrict the set of packages for which to warn to those that have to be
   translated (compilers). The warning could then point out that the developer
   can either drop the versioned dependency or format the build dependencies so
   that they get properly translated during cross compilation.

This also means that fixing this bug has to wait until cross compiler
translation arrives in main.

Would this course of action be acceptible?

cheers, josch