Bug#998115: lintian: false positive: "unknown-field Description" in source package

[Hannah Rittich <void@rittich.net>]

Hi,

> I think you misunderstood the Policy here.
>
>> The Debian Policy Manual [1] states that "in a source or binary
>> control file, the Description field contains a description of the
>> binary package [...]".
>
> expanding the sentence above, that's "source control file" or
> "binary control file". The former is your debian/control, the letter
> is DEBIAN/control inside a .deb.
>
> That line is just saying "this field is used in these kind of
> files", not actually describing where in those files that field can
> be used. For that, you need to go to
> 
file:///usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.html/ch-controlfields.html#source-package-control-files-debian-control
>
> that clearly says that Description is only allowed the binary
> paragraphs.

Ah, I see.

> You should use a non-standard field for that, meaning those fields
> that start with X-.  Those are documented in deb-src-control(5) and
> not in Policy (since they are non-standard after all).
>
> For example, use X-Synopsis in the source paragarph, and refer to it
> with a ${S:X-Synopsis} substvar or such.

That does the trick. Thank you!

>> Furthermore, deb-substvars allows to reference the description
>> field of the source package, using the variables ${source:Synopsis}
>> and ${source:Extended-Description} [2].
>
> Uh.  TIL.  However I find that odd. Regardless, that's dpkg's choice,
> and not Policy.
>
> I asked to the dpkg maintainers whether they had an intention to
> propose a corresponding Policy change for it, since TTBOMK,
> Description was never used in the source paragarph.

Okay. I think in this case, the bug report should be closed.

Thanks again, for helping.

Regards,

Hannah