* Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>, 2011-12-19, 09:49:
The problem is with paragraphs like this: | Copyright: 2042, J. Random Hacker | License: BSD-6-clauses | Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without | modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions | are met: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah.In early DEP-5 drafts, Files field could be ommited in certain circumstances, so this could have been a perfectly valid files paragraph. But with the current DEP-5 version, if we allow any extra fields, this suddenly becomes a valid stand-alone license paragraph.Please see bug #652380 for a real-world example.Meh. When someone writes their debian/copyright with this line at the top:Format: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5then they have no business complaining when parsers and validators reject the file as not being compliant with the current version of the spec.
So far nobody has been complaining about that. The only complain was about unhelpful (though technically correct) diagnostics.
More to the point, lintian should *not* be trying to accept such files on the basis that this was once considered valid.
Agreed. And it does not try do it.
Lintian should be enforcing the current spec on anything that claims to be a DEP5 file, not trying to support all kinds of intermediate forms as "valid".Now if there were a Format: line at the top pointing at a url that lintian doesn't know about, it would be reasonable to skip the rest and simply note that an unrecognized format is being used.
Agreed. That's how it's currently implemented: if the detected DEP-5 version is older than svn148 (which was the last time the spec was overhauled), the only tag DEP-5-ish tag it'll possibly emit is the one complaining about the URI itself.
-- Jakub Wilk