Bug#807695: lintian: false positive for command-with-path-in-maintainer-script

[Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.de>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.38.1
Severity: normal

I got a false positive for FusionForge in sid:

W: gforge-db-postgresql: command-with-path-in-maintainer-script postinst:8 /usr/bin/pg_lsclusters
[…]
N:    See particularly the function pathfind() in devref.

The line in question:

if [ -x /usr/bin/pg_lsclusters ]; then

OK, I looked into devref, and it explicitly says:

    If you need to check for the existence of a command, you should
    use something like

    if [ -x /usr/sbin/install-docs ]; then ...

But, huh? Turns out lintian false-positives that as well:

$ perl -e '$cmd = "if [ -x /usr/bin/pg_lsclusters ]; then"; if($cmd =~ m{\[\s+(?:!\s+)? -x \s+(/(?:usr/)?s?bin/[\w.+-]+)\s+ \]}xsm){print "true\n";}else{print "false\n";}'
true
$ perl -e '$cmd = "if [ -x /usr/sbin/install-docs ]; then"; if($cmd =~ m{\[\s+(?:!\s+)? -x \s+(/(?:usr/)?s?bin/[\w.+-]+)\s+ \]}xsm){print "true\n";}else{print "false\n";}'
true

This doesn’t happen in wheezy but in sid.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unreleased
  APT policy: (500, 'unreleased'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: x32 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386, amd64

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/lksh
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                       2.25.90.20151209-1
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-8
ii  diffstat                       1.60-1
ii  file                           1:5.25-2
ii  gettext                        0.19.6-1
ii  hardening-includes             2.7
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.4
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29+b4
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.55-1
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.38-1
ii  libdigest-sha-perl             5.95-2
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.18.3
ii  libemail-valid-perl            1.198-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.07-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.94-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.413-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-8
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.13-1
ii  libtimedate-perl               2.3000-2
ii  liburi-perl                    1.69-1
ii  man-db                         2.7.5-1
ii  patchutils                     0.3.4-1
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.20.2-6
ii  t1utils                        1.38-4
ii  xz-utils                       5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  dpkg                            1.18.3
pn  libperlio-gzip-perl             <none>
ii  perl                            5.20.2-6
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.20.2-6

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
ii  binutils-multiarch     2.25.90.20151209-1
ii  dpkg-dev               1.18.3
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-2
pn  libtext-template-perl  <none>
ii  libyaml-perl           1.15-1

-- no debconf information