Hi, Detecting native binary packages [1] does not work nearly as well as for source packages [2]. In the Lintian test suite, we see discrepancies in the same *.changes files [3]. For that reason, I will soon propose to move all tags that depend on the detection from 'binary' to 'source'.
In practice, that means moving many tags from the check 'changelog-file' to 'source-changelog'. (The check 'fields' may be split up.) The reclassification of tags as source vs. binary will cause ripple effects, such as the adjustment of expected tags in the test suite and potentially the greater ecosystem via overrides. The detection of native binary packages [1] will be removed. When both source and binary packages are present, Lintian may in the future check that changelogs in binary packages are identical to the source. Thank you to pabs for that idea. Please share your thoughts. Kind regards Felix Lechner [1] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Collect/Binary.pm#L89-119 [2] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Collect/Source.pm#L146-189 [3] An example are the legacy-maintainer-scripts family of tests; they use a native template but an erroneous, non-native looking version. The historical changelog versions, starting at '6.1' are parsed as non-native, causing faulty Lintian results.
