direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Howdy all,

I'm getting a Lintian tag reported on some of my Python packages:

    direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt

Now, this is a “pedantic”-level tag, but it does seem valid: the
SOURCES.txt file is in fact modified from the original upstream source.

It is done by the build process, specifically the Setuptools ‘egg_info’
step::

=====
[…]
   dh_auto_install
running install
running build
running build_py
running install_lib
[…]
running egg_info
writing requirements to foo.egg-info/requires.txt
writing foo.egg-info/PKG-INFO
writing top-level names to foo.egg-info/top_level.txt
writing dependency_links to foo.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
reading manifest file 'foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
warning: no files found matching 'TODO'
writing manifest file 'foo.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
Copying foo.egg-info to /tmp/buildd/foo-1.5.2/debian/foo/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/foo-1.2.3.egg-info
[…]
=====

Can I prevent this from happening, perhaps by an option to the
Setuptools procedure? If not, can I recover from this result during the
Debian packaging?

I am loth to override the Lintian tag, because I agree that it's valid.
I would rather fix the behaviour causing it.

-- 
 \             “We can't depend for the long run on distinguishing one |
  `\         bitstream from another in order to figure out which rules |
_o__)               apply.” —Eben Moglen, _Anarchism Triumphant_, 1999 |
Ben Finney