Bug#935706: lintian: Make tag certainty a programmatic assessment

["Chris Lamb" <lamby@debian.org>]

Hi Felix,


> > I would very much suggest we repurpose "severity" here instead of
> > inventing a new term.
> 
> That is exactly what I thought you might think (and it is why I
> prepared a merge request instead of committing directly).
> 
> Just one thought, please: Do you think the term severity may be, well,
> too severe?

Just to note up front that I fully understand your concern but I think
we merely differ in degree in two key places.

Firstly, I don't believe the term is — as you aptly (!) put it — all
that severe to begin with. I would prefer to avoid tediously trading
dictionary definitions with each other here but just to give one
example from many, I would claim that "alert level" is a more
emotionally-laden and critical term than "severity", but that may be
an en_GB (or even an en_*) cultural assumption.

Secondly, I think we place different values in consistency between
older and newer versions of Lintian (ie. the cognitive cost of
renaming this key term) as well as the benefits of harmonising with
the rest of the Debian ecosystem in general. I tried I made most of my
(admittedly somewhat rambling) point in my previous mail already so I
will not bore readers with that again. :)

Again, just to underline that I do understand the wider point you are
trying to make about the philosophy of Lintian but I must stay with
my original position that, on balance and after weighing both sides,
retaining the term "severity" is the best way forward here.

(Note from a practical point of view that this would not preclude us
from renaming the term in the future if the situation changes; ie.
this rename is somewhat orthogonal to the removal of the concept of
"certainty".)


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org 🍥 chris-lamb.co.uk
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