Hi Mentors List!
I am quite new to packaging for Debian, and I would like to learn more
and help out with Debian, which I have used for so many years now.
Recently I submitted a Request to Adopt `cunit`. I updated the Debian
packaging to newest standards, and would like to ask for some review.
https://mentors.debian.net/package/cunit/
My first upload looked pretty clean on the mentors lintian. I did get
some comments from a Seyed Mohamad Amin Modaresi (these comments seem to
have disappeared, but I still have the email notifications at least!),
and made changes accordingly where it seem to make sense.
Unfortunately, now there are more lintian warnings than before.
Based on the last comment I received from Mr Modaresi, I replied with
the following (to which I had no more replies):
Hi,
Thank you for your feedback. My replies:
1. `.gitignore` is not part of upstream, it's purely for salsa. `dpkg
source` ignores `.gitignore` from every source package it builds, so
this should be fine.
2. -dfsg → +dfsg
While I agree that the + format is more modern, I don't think I can
change it now. the - format has been used since 2006. I ran `dpkg --
compare-versions "2.1-3+dfsg-3" gt "2.1-3-dfsg-2.7" ; echo $?` which
returns `1` (meaning: false, the + format is not seen as greater-than
the - format). So, I don't think a change would work at all; it would
mess up the package version ordering in Debian.
3. Version churn (the dsfg-3,4,5,6,...)
Yes, I agree, it's ugly. This is the first Debian package I am intend
to adopt. I thought I had it all sorted in the first upload, but you
came with good suggestions for changes and I learned a few things. As
a result, more uploads. I am worried the lintian (on mentors) or
uploads won't work if I keep the same version number. If needed, I can
always squash these changes (also in the changelog) before it's handed
over to the Debian uploader?
Thank you again for your advise.
I would be very grateful if someone could have a look at this package
and see if it fits the bill, or if I should make more changes before it
can be uploaded.
Since I was busy on that package, I have done some more bug wrangling
based on the website with RC bugs (they seem the most important?), and
gained a little more experience. I think that I could (but not sure if I
should!) "hide" some of the lintian warnings via a `lintian-overrides`
file. For those things that I cannot change (e.g.
hyphen-in-upstream-part, or deprecated-configure-filename), should I
create a lintian-override? Or, for the latter, a patch to rename the file?
Many thanks for your help! So far I have found the Debian community
extremely helpful, and I would be very happy to give something back!
Kind regards,
Edmund Lodewijks
