Control: reassign -1 debian-policy Control: retitle -1 debian-policy: Binary and Description fields not mandatory in .changes on source-only uploads
On Mon, 2020-06-22 at 18:51:21 -0700, Felix Lechner wrote: > Package: dpkg > Severity: normal > X-Debbugs-CC: debian-lint-ma...@lists.debian.org > Starting with an upcoming release, Lintian will check for the presence > of required and recommended fields in various packaging control files. > Our methods are probably not perfect, but it was brought to my > attention that 'dpkg-buildpackage -S' produces *.changes files without > 'Binary' and 'Description' fields. This is due to a fix in dpkg 1.19.3 prompted by #818618, which brought up an inconsistency in the handling of these fields (commit 4a4619831de8b8972f86b489660dc98f187cfa34 in dpkg.git). DAK got also fixed to accept these .changes files. > Policy 5.5 states that both fields are mandatory. [1] > > [1] > https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#debian-changes-files-changes > > You may be able to find details about an example (by building Lintian) > at the link below. > > https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/commit/54a3c2437eadb0684f6762a81a82163f36562d3e#note_176583 > > Please note that I filed this bug with normal severity, even though as > a policy violation, it should be serious. I did so because I believe > the policy is at least partially in error (with respect to the > 'Binary' field). The deb-changes(5) and policy state that these fields contain information for binary packages being uploaded. On a source-only upload, there are no such binaries, so the definition was internally inconsistent. I think the only thing missing is policy clarifying that this field is only mandatory on non-source-only uploads. Regards, Guillem
