Bug#877766: lintian: more false positives in copyright-year-in-future

[Mattia Rizzolo]

I see what you mean.
Point taken :)

On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 8:43 PM Chris Lamb  wrote:

> Hi Mattia,
>
> > Dunno if this is the case, but would be possible to at least keep it for
> > some cases
> […]
>
> Whilst this is certainly possible I just can't shake the feeling that
> this tag isn't actually finding "real" bugs in packages worth of the
> investment.
>
> Sure, a typo of 2117 instead of 2017 is objectively "wrong" but whilst
> I am not a lawyer (I just play one on TV, etc. etc.) no court anywhere
> in the world is going to rule against someone on the basis of such an
> obvious typo.
>
> Thus, I think the Lintian developers' precious hours are better spent
> elsewhere and not playing whack-a-mole with this tag, and that's not
> taking into consideration the time or annoyance this tag can cause or
> has already caused regular developers.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> --
>   ,''`.
>  : :'  : Chris Lamb
>  `. `'`  la...@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
>`-
>

Bug#877766: lintian: more false positives in copyright-year-in-future

[Chris Lamb]

Hi Mattia,

> Dunno if this is the case, but would be possible to at least keep it for
> some cases
[…]

Whilst this is certainly possible I just can't shake the feeling that
this tag isn't actually finding "real" bugs in packages worth of the
investment.

Sure, a typo of 2117 instead of 2017 is objectively "wrong" but whilst
I am not a lawyer (I just play one on TV, etc. etc.) no court anywhere
in the world is going to rule against someone on the basis of such an
obvious typo.

Thus, I think the Lintian developers' precious hours are better spent
elsewhere and not playing whack-a-mole with this tag, and that's not
taking into consideration the time or annoyance this tag can cause or
has already caused regular developers.


Best wishes,

-- 
  ,''`.
 : :'  : Chris Lamb
 `. `'`  la...@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
   `-

Bug#877766: lintian: more false positives in copyright-year-in-future

[Mattia Rizzolo]

Hi Chris,

On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 11:00:15AM +0100, Chris Lamb wrote:
> "Fixed" in Git:
> 
>   
> https://anonscm.debian.org/git/lintian/lintian.git/commit/?id=b82460be905f860ef0b878b4b927c29ae9535566

Dunno if this is the case, but would be possible to at least keep it for
some cases where the amount of fpos would be way lower?  I'm thinking
about checking on machine-parsable d/copyright, and only for the
Copyright fields, and even there only the first chars of the field.

-- 
regards,
Mattia Rizzolo

GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18  4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540  .''`.
more about me:  https://mapreri.org : :'  :
Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri  `. `'`
Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia  `-


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Bug#877766: lintian: more false positives in copyright-year-in-future

[Chris Lamb]

tags 877766 + pending
thanks

"Fixed" in Git:

  
https://anonscm.debian.org/git/lintian/lintian.git/commit/?id=b82460be905f860ef0b878b4b927c29ae9535566


Regards,

-- 
  ,''`.
 : :'  : Chris Lamb
 `. `'`  la...@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
   `-

Bug#877766: lintian: more false positives in copyright-year-in-future

[Guillem Jover]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.54
Severity: normal

Hi!

The new copyright-year-in-future check is very prone to
false-positives. And I doesn't feel like white-listing context is
the best way to go around this. :/

ISTM that this check should only be performed on the Copyright field
for machine-readable files. Checking the License field text (or the
entire file for non-machine readable files) is too error prone.

Examples of this can be src:glide, or the thousands of tags emitted
from lintian.d.o, which to me are a sign the check is misguided.

Thanks,
Guillem