Bug#907727: Empty directory is already present in orig tarball
Hi Russ,
On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 3:36 PM Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>
> I would like Lintian to stop complaining about this when a file is
> explicitly added to that directory by the packaging. It's otherwise
> unactionable by the maintainer.
Please forgive me. I misunderstood your original filing.
I agree with you, and I have the same problem with my packages. The
burden of dealing with empty directories in upstream sources should be
placed on our tools. The recommendation, in the tag description, that
upstream should remove the directory is awful. I tried that once; it
was embarrassing. That part should be erased from the tag description.
> > Adding placeholder solely to your debianized sources
> > will not help.
>
> Why not?
I was just stating fact.
> why is that not a reasonable solution to
> the underlying problem ...
> The directory is now representable in Git and other
> directory-unaware views of the Debian package, since it now has a file in
> it.
Well, I do not use git-buildpackage, and such an intricate and obscure
solution does nothing for me. Perhaps the tag should be removed from
Lintian. A warning in git-buildpackage, if possible, would be more
appropriate.
> Maybe I should say explicitly that I think of Lintian as a linter for the
> *Debian packaging*, not a linter for the upstream package, so I'm a little
> dubious of tags that report purely upstream problems the Debian packager
> cannot fix without changing upstream.
I like that perspective very much. Thank you for sharing. Your comment
shall help guide me in the future.
At the same time, I will continue to forward many items, such as
spelling errors in manpages and binaries, to upstream. :)
> I can add an override if I need to, but I do feel like this tag is wrong
> in a way that Lintian *could* get right with more data.
I think the tag is wrong with or without more data. It appears in the
archive 11,482 times, with 302 overrides. If there are no objections
within a reasonable time frame (perhaps a month), I will propose to
remove the tag from Lintian.
> I totally understand if you don't think it's worth fixing, but I'm not
> sure what Lintian could reasonably expect me to do about it other than
> what I already did.
Sorry, my previous response was based on a misunderstanding. Your
concern is important, and you are right.
Kind regards,
Felix
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