RfC: Moving not-pkg-perl-team-specific lintian tests from pkg-perl-tools to lintian proper

[Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>]

Hi,

I intent to move some lintian tests currently used by the Debian Perl
Team an packaged in the pkg-perl lintian profile shipped with
pkg-perl-tools into lintian.

Reason is that some of the lintian checks in pkg-perl-tools are useful
for either also non-perl packages or perl-packages not packaged by the
Debian Perl Team.

All checks contained in pkg-perl-tools can be seen at
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-perl/packages/pkg-perl-tools.git/tree/lintian/checks/pkg-perl

My main movation is to get the check application-not-library with the
following tags into lintian:

* libapp-perl-package-name
* library-package-name-for-application
* application-in-library-section

This check actually already supports also python and ruby libraries.

Looking through the other checks, I'd consider the following tests
also useful for others:

Check: cdbs (perl-specific)
  Tag: arch-any-package-needs-newer-cdbs (*)
  Tag: module-build-tiny-needs-newer-cdbs

Check: debhelper (perl-specific)
  Tag: arch-any-package-needs-newer-debhelper (*)
  Tag: module-build-tiny-needs-newer-debhelper

Check: module-name
  Tag: no-module-name-in-description (*)

Check: modulebuild
  Tag: libmodule-build-perl-needs-to-be-in-build-depends
  Tag: libmodule-build-tiny-perl-needs-to-be-in-build-depends

Check: no-perl-modules
  Tag: depends-on-perl-modules

Check: usr-lib-perl5
  Tag: usr-lib-perl5-mentioned

Check: xs-abi
  Tag: legacy-vendorarch-directory (*)

(This would only leave two team-specific checks, vcs and testsuite.)

Those tags marked with "(*)" likely need to be renamed by adding the
string "perl" somewhere.

I'd be happy to get at least some comments from Gregor and Damyan if
they agree to have the pkg-perl lintian check written by them to be
moved into lintian.

I'd also would like to hear some comments by Niels and other Lintian
contributors if they consider those tests also suitable for lintian
proper.

My plan for moving the tests is:

* Coordinating the uploads of the first uploads of pkg-perl-tools and
  lintian after the move. Probably by first doing uploads to
  experimental first.

* lintian will need according Breaks and Replaces header.

* I currently don't expect that pkg-perl-tools needs any such
  relations added.

* pkg-perl-tools currently doesn't have any tests for these tags. I'd
  like to write test cases for these tags before I integrated them
  into lintian.

  Hence the question: Is there a possibility to run Lintian's test
  suite on a specific lintian profile?

* The pkg-perl-tools tags are currently scattered over many tests.
  I'll try to integrated those tags into the current set of checks
  (mostly "fields" and "files" probably) where suitable as I think it
  wouldn't be good performance-wise to add 8 new checks to lintian for
  about a dozen new tags.

* I'll probably work on feature branches in the pkg-perl-tools and
  lintian git repositories until I think everything's working fine.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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