Bug#954141: Lintian: unsteady false-positive: unused-override package-does-not-install-examples

[Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com>]

Hi Christian,

On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 4:45 AM Christian Göttsche
<cgzones@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Lintian's unused-override tag for package-does-not-install-examples
> seems to be unsteady:

The tag says something about how sources and the installation packages
interact. It requires both to be present, i.e. to be pulled in from
the command line. The easiest way is to pass the 'changes' file.

My comments below that explain what is happening, but I agree that
overrides for tags like package-does-not-install-examples should be
handled differently. I will keep your bug open until a fix is
available.

> $ lintian -E -i -I --pedantic --no-tag-display-limit --color auto
> --verbose logrotate_3.16.0-1.dsc
> > I: logrotate source: unused-override package-does-not-install-examples examples/

The binary package is not present. Lintian cannot say whether any
examples are being installed. The override is not used.

Here, nothing should be displayed.

> $ lintian -E -i -I --pedantic --no-tag-display-limit --color auto
> --verbose logrotate_3.16.0-1_amd64.changes
> > *nothing*

Here you see the desired interaction between the tag and its override.
You can try '--show-overrides' for more detail.

> $ lintian -E -i -I --pedantic --no-tag-display-limit --color auto
> --verbose logrotate_3.16.0-1_amd64.changes
> > P: logrotate source: package-does-not-install-examples examples/

Here you see the tag after the override was removed. It is the
expected behavior.

Thank you for bringing the matter to our attention.

Kind regards
Felix Lechner