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Bug#1061453: marked as done (lintian: Confusing use of NEWS.Debian (vs debian/NEWS))

Your message dated Sat, 19 Jul 2025 22:48:09 +0200
with message-id <DBGBS4UFJ75L.2IM8J8GH3FL3C@cknow.org>
and subject line Closing
has caused the Debian Bug report #1061453,
regarding lintian: Confusing use of NEWS.Debian (vs debian/NEWS)
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
1061453: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1061453
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: lintian
Version: 2.116.3
Severity: normal

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I'm not sure if this belongs to the lintian or developers-reference
package, or both. But it's at least confusing to me in lintian.

Based on this paragraph in developers-reference, I added a
``debian/NEWS.Debian`` file to a package:
6.3.5 Supplementing changelogs with NEWS.Debian files

After building the package and running lintian, I get a warning:
incorrect-packaging-filename better: debian/NEWS [debian/NEWS.Debian]

So I updated the package by renaming it to ``debian/NEWS``.
Build the package again and run lintian and I get this warning:
debian-news-entry-has-strange-distribution UNRELEASED

Note that this warning did NOT show up when I had a
``debian/NEWS.Debian`` file, so it seems to 'require' ``debian/NEWS``.

``lintian-explain-tags debian-news-entry-has-strange-distribution`` then
explains what it's for, mentioning ``NEWS.Debian``.

So I cloned the lintian repo to make a MR to replace ``NEWS.Debian``
with ``debian/NEWS`` for that tag.
Thinking there may be more such things, I ran ``grep -rn "NEWS.Debian"``
... which returned a LONG list. So I filed this bug instead of the MR.

The incorrect-packaging-filename explainer also has this line:
"Debhelper sometimes adds *.Debian extensions to NEWS, README and TODO
files."

So it *sometimes* adds the ``.Debian`` extension (but not always?),
but ``wrong-name-for-debian-news-file`` says this:
"The Debian news file must be installed as
/usr/share/doc/*pkg*/NEWS.Debian.gz with exactly that capitalization"

I'm assuming the *must* word complies with RFC2119 and was deliberately
chosen?

So it's confusing to first get a warning about using ``NEWS.Debian`` to
then get a warning which uses ``NEWS.Debian`` in its explanation.

I don't know if (some?) references are outdated and should use the
'new' name or whether it's all technically correct and just confusing as
hell for 'newbies' like me, in which case an explanation in
developers-reference would be much appreciated.


PS: The ``wrong-name-for-debian-news-file`` tag references 6.3.4.

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.6.13-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                        2.41.90.20240122-1
ii  bzip2                           1.0.8-5+b2
ii  diffstat                        1.65-1
ii  dpkg                            1.22.2
ii  dpkg-dev                        1.22.2
ii  file                            1:5.45-2+b1
ii  gettext                         0.21-14
ii  gpg                             2.2.40-1.1+b1
ii  intltool-debian                 0.35.0+20060710.6
ii  iso-codes                       4.16.0-1
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                 0.1.40+b3
ii  libarchive-zip-perl             1.68-1
ii  libberkeleydb-perl              0.64-2+b2
ii  libcapture-tiny-perl            0.48-2
ii  libclass-xsaccessor-perl        1.19-4+b2
ii  libclone-perl                   0.46-1+b1
ii  libconfig-tiny-perl             2.30-1
ii  libconst-fast-perl              0.014-2
ii  libcpanel-json-xs-perl          4.37-1+b1
ii  libdata-dpath-perl              0.59-1
ii  libdata-validate-domain-perl    0.10-1.1
ii  libdata-validate-uri-perl       0.07-2
ii  libdevel-size-perl              0.83-2+b2
pn  libdigest-sha-perl              <none>
ii  libdpkg-perl                    1.22.2
ii  libemail-address-xs-perl        1.05-1+b2
ii  libencode-perl                  3.20-1+b1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl            0.09-2
ii  libfile-find-rule-perl          0.34-3
ii  libfont-ttf-perl                1.06-2
ii  libhtml-html5-entities-perl     0.004-3
ii  libhtml-tokeparser-simple-perl  3.16-4
ii  libio-interactive-perl          1.025-1
ii  libipc-run3-perl                0.048-3
ii  libjson-maybexs-perl            1.004005-1
ii  liblist-compare-perl            0.55-2
ii  liblist-someutils-perl          0.59-1
ii  liblist-utilsby-perl            0.12-2
ii  libmldbm-perl                   2.05-4
ii  libmoo-perl                     2.005005-1
ii  libmoox-aliases-perl            0.001006-2
ii  libnamespace-clean-perl         0.27-2
ii  libpath-tiny-perl               0.144-1
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl             0.20-1+b2
ii  libperlio-utf8-strict-perl      0.010-1+b1
ii  libproc-processtable-perl       0.636-1+b1
ii  libregexp-wildcards-perl        1.05-3
ii  libsereal-decoder-perl          5.004+ds-1+b1
ii  libsereal-encoder-perl          5.004+ds-1+b1
ii  libsort-versions-perl           1.62-3
ii  libsyntax-keyword-try-perl      0.29-1+b1
ii  libterm-readkey-perl            2.38-2+b2
ii  libtext-levenshteinxs-perl      0.03-5+b2
ii  libtext-markdown-discount-perl  0.16-1+b1
ii  libtext-xslate-perl             3.5.9-1+b3
ii  libtime-duration-perl           1.21-2
ii  libtime-moment-perl             0.44-2+b2
ii  libtimedate-perl                2.3300-2
ii  libunicode-utf8-perl            0.62-2+b1
ii  liburi-perl                     5.21-1
ii  libwww-mechanize-perl           2.17-1
ii  libwww-perl                     6.73-1
ii  libxml-libxml-perl              2.0207+dfsg+really+2.0134-1+b2
ii  libyaml-libyaml-perl            0.86+ds-1+b1
ii  lzop                            1.04-2
ii  man-db                          2.12.0-3
ii  patchutils                      0.4.2-1
ii  perl [libencode-perl]           5.38.2-3
ii  plzip [lzip-decompressor]       1.11-1
ii  t1utils                         1.41-4
ii  unzip                           6.0-28
ii  xz-utils                        5.4.5-0.3

lintian recommends no packages.

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch     <none>
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.61-1

- -- no debconf information

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--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
No response in 1.5 years, thus closing.

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