Olе Streicher wrote: > 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? This check is intended to guard against package being built with a broken clock, or even a buggy version of /usr/bin/install which set the time stamp of all files to epoch. See bug #218304. Oddly, the cut-off date is the year 1984, not "more than 20 years ago" as described by lintian-info. I think the DAK rejects are based on lintian checks now, but am not 100% sure. An ovrride would probably work. I think it would be reasonable to file a bug on lintian that this check should not be applied to documentation. -- see shy jo
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