Otto Kekäläinen:
Hi!
What editors and extensions are you using to augment your productivity
and minimize mistakes when editing debian/* files?
I am aware of dpkg-dev-el for Emacs mentioned in the DD reference[1].
I am a big fan of Pulsar[2] and recently found a 'language-debian'
plugin for Pulsar[3], but didn't get it to emit any errors/messages.
I would be interested to learn what editors and integrations others
use specifically for debian/* files. I've witnessed several old DDs
stop their Debian work, and many aspiring ones give up on becoming a
DD, because the Debian packaging work is so laboursome. One small
thing that could ease the burden could be better editor integrations
that help people write and maintain the debian/* files with less
effort.
- Otto
[...]
Hi Otto
Personally, I use PyCharm/IDEA with the IDEA-debpkg plugin (the latter I
wrote because there was no existing plugin) or emacs with dpkg-dev-el
depending on the context.
I think my use of PyCharm/IDEA started for similar reasons that you are
praising Pulsar - if I need to work on another file, it would have an
integration for that (like the preview pane with markdown, support for
shellcheck, etc.).
In most cases, PyCharm (and I presume Pulsar as well) has basic
support out of the box or can hint you to a plugin based on the filename
(extension based) - I do not have to hunt it down. Sadly, except for my
own Debian plugin because d/control and d/changelog does not have
extensions... oh well.
Thanks for the command list. I have added a few of them to my todo list
for my plugin. Like `wrap-and-sort` is due now that it supports comments
and has better defaults out of the box.
Btw, `debhelper` has a `dh_assistant` command that can do some very
basic analysis as well. Not sure any of it is useful for editor
integration (especially because some of the features requires that it
receives the same arguments as `dh` or/and `dh_auto_configure`).
Personally, I have used `dh_assistant detect-hook-targets` to detect
which overrides that `dh` would pick up (relies heavily on
"Build-Depends: dh-sequence-foo" style add ons though). Admittedly, not
in an editor context but if you can combine it with something that reads
known make file targets, you could get a "override_typo looks like an
override target but `dh` does not recognize it"-style warning out of it.
Maybe I should just add that feature directly to `dh_assistant`. Then
you can have one more command for your checklist! :D
Best regards,
Niels
