Control: reassign -1 debhelper Control: retitle -1 dh_installchangelogs should trim old NEWS.Debian entries too Control: found -1 13.30
tl;dr, esp. for debhelper maintainers: dh_installchangelogs should apply the same date/release-based filtering algorithm to debian/NEWS aka NEWS.Debian that it does to debian/changelog. Otherwise very old NEWS entries can appear in the .debs, even for versions that the changelog doesn't mention. This is largely harmless, but does cause a (correct) warning from lintian. If the resulting NEWS.Debian file is empty, it should probably be omitted completely. Hi all. Thanks to Hefee for the report, and for trying to help improve Debian's tooling. Obviously I'm coming into the middle of this situation, so I'm going to try to summarise it to make sure I understand correctly. The torsocks source code, in git[1], contains: * A debian/NEWS file with a single entry from 2014 for 2.0.0-1. * A complete, untrimmed, changelog file. Notably, this mentions 2.0.0-1. When building this package. the resulting .debs, for example torsocks_2.5.0-5_all.deb, contain: * The same NEWS file, now as /usr/share/doc/torsocks/NEWS.Debian.gz. * A trimmed version of debian/changelog, as changelog.Debian.gz. It seems that the debian/changelog entry for 2.0.0-1 was removed by dh_installchangelogs, so that the version in the .deb is a subset of the one in the source code. This is intentional and desirable. But, the NEWS entry then becomes orphaned. I think that this is an oversight in dh_installchangelogs. It should filter NEWS.Debian the same way as debian/changelog. That way the full changelog, and all past debian/NEWS entries, can be retained in the source code, and the .debs will contain the information which is likely to be practically relevant right now, as intended. FTAOD I think it clearly isn't the job of the tag2upload system to try to modify the package source code to filter out old debian/NEWS entries. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with the source code, either in git, or in the source package. Including the whole, untrimmed, changelog, is quite fine - desirable, even. In the meantime I think the lintian warning, while correct, can be ignored. The inclusion of the ancient NEWS entry is an anomaly. lintian is correct to highlight this situation, because another possible cause is that the NEWS entry has been botched. I wouldn't recommend adding a lintian override to torsocks. Instead, we should just tolerate the warning appearing, until dh is improved. Thanks all. Ian. [1] https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-privacy-team/torsocks And, therefore, since t2u was used, also in the .dsc. I don't think the git vs dsc distinction is relevant for this ticket. https://browse.dgit.debian.org/torsocks.git/ -- Ian Jackson <[email protected]> These opinions are my own. Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
