Hi, I am currently working on the (re-)packaging of the "IRAF" astronomical package [1]. This is a huge package with old roots -- the history goes back to the early eighties.
Therefore, the package contains a couple of files which are quite old -- some help files, sources, documentation etc. date 1983 and 1984. This leads to the Lintian *error* shown in the subject. Although I think it is reasonable to overwrite this tag (the files actually *are* that old, and they are still part of the package), I am a bit concerned by the Lintian explanation "Your package will be rejected by the Debian archive scripts if it contains a file with such a timestamp". Searching the policy, I could not find a point that would speak against using old time stamps. Even more, the policy asks me to *keep* the time stamps: | 4.7 Time Stamps | Maintainers should preserve the modification times of the upstream | source files in a package, as far as is reasonably possible. I would also feel a bit bad with just "touch"ing these files, since the age may be an indicator to evaluate the contained information. So, is it reasonable just to overwrite this tag, or will I then face to a package reject? What is the reason for this tag? The package is still heavily used in astronomy and definitely worth packaging. It already was in Debian until 2004 but had to be removed due to license restrictions (which are solved now). Best regards Ole [1] http://bugs.debian.org/690531 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87vc65x4vv....@news.ole.ath.cx