Package: lintian Version: 2.5.48 Severity: normal Hi,
with a package with very old upstream files, I got the following lintian error-level tags since converting the package to debhelper and source format "3.0 (quilt)" -- where I of course removed all patches touching files which get updated via the implicit dh_autoreconf call anyways: E: ccze source: ancient-autotools-helper-file config.guess 2002-07-09 N: N: The referenced file has a time stamp older than year 2004 and the N: package does not build-depend on autotools-dev or automake and therefore N: apparently does not update it. This usually means that the source N: package will not build correctly on all currently released N: architectures. N: N: For packages using debhelper, the tools from the dh-autoreconf package N: should handle this issue. cdbs will automatically update these files if N: autotools-dev is installed during build, but the build dependency on N: autotools-dev is still necessary. N: N: Otherwise, read /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/README.Debian.gz (from the N: autotools-dev package) for information on how to fix this problem. N: N: Severity: important, Certainty: possible N: N: Check: cruft, Type: source N: E: ccze source: ancient-autotools-helper-file config.sub 2002-07-03 If I add an explicit dh-autoreconf buil-dependency, these errors vanish. But the dependency on "debhelper (>= 10)" and debian/compat = 10 already imply that. So this smells a lot like a false positive to me. (I'd though appreciate some confirmation before I start trying to make up a patch for this. :-) -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (980, 'unstable-debug'), (600, 'testing'), (111, 'buildd-unstable'), (111, 'buildd-experimental'), (110, 'experimental'), (105, 'experimental-debug') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.8.0-rc5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages lintian depends on: ii binutils 2.27-8 ii bzip2 1.0.6-8 ii diffstat 1.61-1 ii file 1:5.28-4 ii gettext 0.19.8.1-1 ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.4 ii libapt-pkg-perl 0.1.29+b6 ii libarchive-zip-perl 1.59-1 ii libclass-accessor-perl 0.34-1 ii libclone-perl 0.38-2+b1 ii libdigest-sha-perl 5.96-1+b1 ii libdpkg-perl 1.18.10 ii libemail-valid-perl 1.202-1 ii libfile-basedir-perl 0.07-1 ii libipc-run-perl 0.94-1 ii liblist-moreutils-perl 0.416-1+b1 ii libparse-debianchangelog-perl 1.2.0-11 ii libperl5.24 [libdigest-sha-perl] 5.24.1~rc3-3 ii libtext-levenshtein-perl 0.13-1 ii libtimedate-perl 2.3000-2 ii liburi-perl 1.71-1 ii libyaml-libyaml-perl 0.63-1+b1 ii man-db 2.7.5-1 ii patchutils 0.3.4-1 ii perl 5.24.1~rc3-3 ii t1utils 1.39-2 ii xz-utils 5.2.2-1.2 Versions of packages lintian recommends: ii dpkg 1.18.10 ii libautodie-perl 2.29-2 ii libperlio-gzip-perl 0.19-1+b2 ii perl 5.24.1~rc3-3 ii perl-modules-5.24 [libautodie-perl] 5.24.1~rc3-3 Versions of packages lintian suggests: ii binutils-multiarch 2.27-8 ii dpkg-dev 1.18.10 ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.72-2+b1 ii libtext-template-perl 1.46-1 -- no debconf information