Bug#993813: warn about known invalid fields in debian/upstream/metadata

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

Hi,

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 3:42 PM Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer@debian.org> wrote:
>
> something needs to tell the maintainer their package is wrong.

I struggle with telling anyone that "their package is wrong," when a
maintainer, possibly overwhelmed by zealous metadata collection
(hello, DuckDuckGo), added a defensible value. The sources I saw that
listed "https://github.com/join"; for Registration pointed to upstreams
offering issue resolution via Github. I believe the site requires
users to be registered. Moreover, the URL appeared to be correct.

> If they're a part of the debian/ packaging, then surely they're in the
> realm of what lintian checks for?

Lintian can do it, but you presented neither a good set of prohibited
or a good set of allowed values. In fact neither side is well-defined,
which makes for poor tags

> Should we create separate linters
> for certain files under debian/ like debian/upstream/metadata ?

I would certainly welcome such a tool.

Kind regards
Felix Lechner