Lintian says "package-contains-ancient-file"
Hi,
I am currently working on the (re-)packaging of the "IRAF" astronomical
package [1]. This is a huge package with old roots -- the history goes
back to the early eighties.
Therefore, the package contains a couple of files which are quite old --
some help files, sources, documentation etc. date 1983 and 1984. This
leads to the Lintian *error* shown in the subject. Although I think it
is reasonable to overwrite this tag (the files actually *are* that old,
and they are still part of the package), I am a bit concerned by the
Lintian explanation "Your package will be rejected by the Debian archive
scripts if it contains a file with such a timestamp".
Searching the policy, I could not find a point that would speak against
using old time stamps. Even more, the policy asks me to *keep* the time
stamps:
| 4.7 Time Stamps
| Maintainers should preserve the modification times of the upstream
| source files in a package, as far as is reasonably possible.
I would also feel a bit bad with just "touch"ing these files, since the
age may be an indicator to evaluate the contained information.
So, is it reasonable just to overwrite this tag, or will I then face to
a package reject? What is the reason for this tag?
The package is still heavily used in astronomy and definitely worth
packaging. It already was in Debian until 2004 but had to be removed due
to license restrictions (which are solved now).
Best regards
Ole
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/690531
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