Bug#905469: lintian: Please emit tag on direct access to dpkg database

[Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>]

tags 905469 + moreinfo
thanks


Hi Guillem,

> This is one blocker that is getting in the way of deploying mtree
> support as the dpkg database store, because .list, .md5sums and
> .conffiles are intended to disappear from under /var/lib/dpkg/info/
> and that will break all these packages and programs.

Ah, neat. I wasn't aware of this proposal and I hope Lintian can help
get us to that quicker. (Is there a wishlist bug or similar with more
info about this, just out of interest?)

>   * Using «dpkg --status» for package status.
>   * Using «dpkg --status» for Conffiles field.
>   * Using «dpkg-query --listfiles» for file lists.
>   * Using «dpkg-query --control-(list|show)» to get control file
>     information.

Cool. So, some quick questions:

 * Are there some existing packages that currently break that we can
   crib as testcases? 

 * What files should actually be checked? We wouldn't want to fire on
   docs, just as one obvious example.

 * Could you write a quick tag description? What you wrote in the
   introduction to this tag would be a good start at the very least.

 * What sort of severity level would you be looking for?


Best wishes,

-- 
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     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
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