Bug#662998: debian-policy: stripping static libraries

[niels@thykier.net (Niels Thykier)]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> One drawback here, then, is that we don't know how many packages
> would be affected.  Is there a way that Lintian could introduce a
> check so that we know how many packages we would make buggy by adding
> a should?

Hi,

Both objdump and readelf handles ".a" files by giving a dump per ".o"
file in the ar archive (only tested on /usr/lib/libgettextpo.a).

We could look for the .note and .comment sections for those and give a
"not properly stripped" tag.  However, I doubt that L::Collect and
checks/binaries "DTRT" if handed the objdump/readelf output for a ".a"
file.  So some work is probably needed.

~Niels

PS: Not subscribed to the bug or d-policy bugs, so please CC as
needed.