Bug#907727: Empty directory is already present in orig tarball
Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> writes:
> Please forgive me. I misunderstood your original filing.
Oh, it's no problem! Apologies if I came across as upset. I think I
didn't phrase my reply very well.
> Well, I do not use git-buildpackage, and such an intricate and obscure
> solution does nothing for me.
To be clear, all I did was add a placeholder file to that directory in the
Debian packaging (which because I'm using 3.0 quilt means that it gets
included in the diff). I don't think there was anything specific to
git-buildpackage there. The result is that the patches-applied Debian
packaging tree is then representable in Git, which did seem mildly
superior to recreating the directory in debian/rules if it had disappeared
due to a round trip through Git.
> At the same time, I will continue to forward many items, such as
> spelling errors in manpages and binaries, to upstream. :)
Oh, sure, absolutely.
> 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.
That also works for me. That said, I can think of a situation where it
could mask an obscure bug: if the upstream build system expects to be able
to write to that directory without creating it first, this will work
correctly if the upstream tarball is unpacked, the Debian unpacked over
it, and then debian/rules run. But if a Git import happens in the middle
of that process, the package will then fail to build.
Given that, I can see some merit to adding a file to that directory in the
Debian package or otherwise arranging for that directory to be recreated.
It's a kind of annoying problem otherwise since whether or not it's
reproducible depends on whether one checks the package into (or out of)
Git or just unpacks it directly, something that most people wouldn't
expect to make a difference.
So I'm not sure the Lintian tag is completely wrong (although pedantic is
probably the right severity). If it had gone away once I added a file to
that directory in the packaging, I would have been quite happy with the
tag and its recommendation.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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