Bug#801633: lintian: False positive of syntax-error-in-dep5-copyright with documentation example

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

On Mon, 12 Oct 2015 22:12:14 +0200 Ben Wiederhake
<BenWiederhake.GitHub@gmx.de> wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.5.38
> Severity: normal
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> I was trying to get an ITP submission lintian-clean, when I got stumped by a
> very stubborn warning, even after reading every sentence in the packaging-
> documentation on debian/copyright ever so carefully.
> 
> Then I tried the example from the documentation itself [1], and the warning
> persists. I report this as a bug in lintian because I believe that lintian
> should accept positive examples from the documentation without warning.
> 
> To reproduce, clone the given repo [2], and run:
> 
> $ lintian -EviIL +pedantic telegram-purple_1.2.2-1.dsc
> [...]
>

Hi,

Line 18 has:

"""
Copyright 2009, 2010 Angela Watts
"""

Which is missing a colon.  Lintian is correct in flagging that invalid.
 As the same time,the copyright 1.0 documentation is also correct albeit
confusing.  Note that it says "The Copyright *field* for that paragraph
*would contain*: <...>"

In other words, the (full) example is:

"""
Copyright: Copyright 2008 John Smith
           Copyright 2009, 2010 Angela Watts
"""

You are certainly not the first to be tricked by that wording.

Thanks,
~Niels