Bug#685506: debian-policy: Please add field Files-Excluded to machine readable copyright files definition
Package: debian-policy
Severity: minor
Hello,
there was some discussion on debian-devel@l.d.o about enabling uscan to
remove files from an upstream tarball automatically. In this discussion
(first mentioning was here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00406.html
) the idea occured that it makes perfectly sense to mention files which
are excluded from the tarball inside the debian/copyright file. From my
perspective this makes sense in any case (independently whether uscan
does any automatic job here or not.) Please note that this problem is
somehow connected to bug #561494.
I would propose the following addition to
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
----------------------- 8< ---------------------------------------------
Files-Excluded
--------------
Whitespace-separated list: list of patterns indicating files removed
from upstream source.
# begin copy of Files field description
Filename patterns in the Files field are specified using a simplified
shell glob syntax. Patterns are separated by whitespace.
Only the wildcards * and ? apply; the former matches any number of
characters (including none), the latter a single character. Both match
slashs (/) and leading dots, unlike shell globs. The pattern *.in
therefore matches any file whose name ends in .in anywhere in the source
tree, not just at the top level.
Patterns match pathnames that start at the root of the source tree.
Thus, "Makefile.in" matches only the file at the root of the tree, but
"*/Makefile.in" matches at any depth.
The backslash (\) is used to remove the magic from the next character;
see table below.
Escape sequence Matches
\* star (asterisk)
\? question mark
\\ backslashAny other character following a backslash is an error.
This is the same pattern syntax as fnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME
flag, or the argument to the -path test of the GNU find command, except
that [] wildcards are not recognized.
# end copy of Files field description
The field is optional and should be specified in connection with the
Source field.
----------------------- >8 ---------------------------------------------
Kind regards
Andreas.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.5
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.36-xenU-4814-i386 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
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