[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: possibly exhausted ftp-masters (Re: Do we still value contributions?



Quoting Roberto C. Sánchez (2019-12-26 17:29:52)
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 04:30:58PM +0100, Thorsten Alteholz wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > >    So, what does the FTP team consider that we, as the wider 
> > >    community of Debian Developers, can do to help?
[...]
> > When there is a REJECT and the maintainer used a tool like 
> > licensecheck, file a bug and let the tools become better.
> 
> One interesting thing about this is that I have often wondered if it 
> would be beneficial to have checks on debian/copyright during the life 
> of a package.

lintian does some continuous checks.

Doing it more aggressively requires (I guess¹) more work than is 
currently available with licensecheck and related tools.


> Checking only once when a package first enters the Debian archive 
> seems to leave open the rather likely possibility that some change in 
> a future upstream release changes or adds some component license that 
> should be documented in debian/copyright.  I try to be diligent in 
> this regard and even at times have found that I overlook things.

Keeping debian/copyright up-to-date is certainly an important and 
*required* part of package maintenance!

Some use cme for automating this, I currently use licensecheck2dep5 - 
again, please look at https://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightReviewTools for 
options, and anyone having experience with other approaches please add 
them to that wiki page!


> In any event, a tool that can scan a source tree and produce a base 
> debian/copyright file that I as a maintianer could edit would be a 
> marvelous thing.  Would be possible to make the licensecheck tool dual 
> use in that way?

You mean this?:

  licensecheck --recursive --deb-machine *

Other tools listed at https://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightReviewTools can 
do similar/related tasks - in particular cme and licensecheck2dep5.


 - Jonas


¹ I am not intimately familiar with linitan, so I only guess that the 
reason it does not e.g. makes use of licensecheck is that it is too 
unreliable to correlate with machine-readable debian/copyright files.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: signature


Reply to: