Hi Manoj,
Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20 2009, Raphael Geissert wrote:
>
>> Hi Manoj,
>>
>> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> [...]
>>>
>>> I find that experimental and pedantic add far too much
>>> irrelevant chatter, and that it tends to mask the problems one should
>>> actually fix.
>>>
>>
>> Could you please elaborate a bit more? I'd like to know how I can improve
>> lintian so that it is more useful for others.
>
> ,----[ Manual page lintian(1) ]
> | --pedantic
> | Display pedantic ("P:") tags as well. They are normally
> | suppressed.
> |
> | Pedantic tags are Lintian at its most pickiest and include
> | checks for particular Debian packaging styles, checks that are
> | very frequently wrong, and checks that many people disagree
> | with. Expect false positives and Lintian tags that you don't
> | consider useful if you use this option. Adding overrides for
> | pedantic tags is probably not worth the effort.
> `----
>
> Pretty much covers it, neh?
>
> Also:
>
> ,----[ http://lintian.debian.org/manual/ch2.html#s2.3 ]
> | Experimental:
> | This means that the code that generates this message is not as well
> | tested as the rest of Lintian, and might still give surprising
> | results. Feel free to ignore Experimental messages that do not seem to
> | make sense, though of course bug reports are always welcomed.
> `----
Well, experimental checks are not to be considered "irrelevant chatter",
hence my question.
The current experimental checks are:
Tag: spelling-error-in-binary
Severity: normal
Certainty: wild-guess
It is based on the output of strings(1) so it can't tell for sure whether a
string is actually displayed or it is just a symbol or something else, or
whether it is really an error or not (although it is pretty accurate in
most cases).
--
Tag: template-uses-unsplit-choices
Severity: normal
Certainty: possible
Erm, IIRC this one should no longer be marked as experimental ever since
lenny was released.
--
Tag: embedded-pear-module
Severity: normal
Certainty: possible
PEAR modules are a bit tricky to detect properly without making it too
specific, in which case the check itself wouldn't be of much use.
--
Tag: shlib-calls-exit
Severity: wishlist
Certainty: possible
There's no way for lintian to tell whether the usage of exit or _exit is
correct at all in the shared library, and it is based only by looking at
the symbols.
>
> Now, people experienced in packaging stuff for Debian ought to
> be looking at pedantic and experimental tags and giving feedback to
> Lintian, to improve it (I certainly do). But I only look at
> experimental and pedantic tags when I want to see f I want to give
> feedback to Lintian, not as a package check. As a package check it is
> very inefficient, and definitely not what I would recommend to a
> novice.
I would personally recommend checking pedantic tags here in mentors, it is a
great way to introduce people to best practises. If anyone refuses to make
the change suggested by lintian elaborating a bit more why could be a good
exercise as well.
As a reference, the current pedantic checks are:
no-upstream-changelog
experimental-to-unstable-without-comment
debian-control-has-unusual-field-spacing
copyright-refers-to-symlink-license
source-contains-cvs-control-dir
source-contains-svn-control-dir
source-contains-bzr-control-dir
source-contains-arch-control-dir
source-contains-git-control-dir
source-contains-hg-control-dir
source-contains-bts-control-dir
source-contains-svn-commit-file
source-contains-svk-commit-file
source-contains-arch-inventory-file
source-contains-hg-tags-file
source-contains-cvs-conflict-copy
source-contains-svn-conflict-file
source-contains-prebuilt-binary
source-contains-prebuilt-windows-binary
no-homepage-field
direct-changes-in-diff-but-no-patch-system
example-unusual-interpreter
example-interpreter-in-usr-local
example-shell-script-fails-syntax-check
maintainer-script-without-set-e
Cheers,
--
Raphael Geissert - Debian Developer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net
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