Bug#798762: Lintian tag pre-depends-directly-on-multiarch-support too much debhelper-centric

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 05:13:46PM +0200, Niels Thykier wrote:
> On 2015-09-12 13:50, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > Package: lintian
> > Version: 2.5.36.1
> > 
> > [...]
> > A Pre-Depends on multiarch-support should not be an error by itself,
> > unless we have already decided that a stable release has happened and
> > we don't need the predepends anymore,[...]
> 
> A stable release has happened and we do not need the Pre-Depends any more.
> 
> Had you been using debhelper AND the ${misc:Pre-Depends} variable, you
> would not be getting this warning.  That is all there is too it.
> 
> We will look into a different wording (patches welcome).  Mean while,
> please drop the Pre-Depends on multiarch-support.

Thanks a lot.

In such case I would just drop this tag completely and create a new one.
(instead of changing the wording of the current one).

I don't speak perl, but it could be something like this:

if (package does not have a Build-Depends: debhelper)
and (source control file has a hardcoded Pre-Depends on multiarch-support)

then:

warning: A stable release has happened, it's safe to drop the Pre-Depends
on multiarch-support now

(this is in fact the kind of lintian warning I'd love to see in gettext).

Or, alternatively:

if (source control file has a hardcoded Pre-Depends on multiarch-support)
  if (package uses debhelper)
    warning: You should drop hardcoded pre-depends because that's what
    debhelper is for.
  else (i.e. package does not use debhelper)
    warning: It's safe to drop the pre-depends now.