clone 525782 -1
reassign -1 dpkg-dev
retitle -1 dpkg-gensymbols should strip #MISSING lines in symbols files in .deb
thanks
On Mon, 27 Apr 2009, Paul Wise wrote:
Please warn about symbols files containing #MISSING: ...
It's not clear to me that they have to be stripped. They represent useful
information for the maintainer about the history of the library. I tend to
agree that they are useless in the symbols files inside the .deb (and
hence in /var/lib/dpkg/info/) but I would not force them to be stripped
inside the source package.
dpkg-gensymbols should strip them by default when generating an updated
symbols file (but still show them that way in the diff). Hence the clone.
(It should still have an option to keep them at least for the mole worker
that generates initial symbols files)
See also in #521551 how the format might evolve to contain more
meta-information about symbols and how using those comments was
suggested.
Note that those lines might also come from the symbol files that they
grabbed on qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/mole.cgi and not necessarily from their
own patching.
These lines indicate some symbols have disappeared in newer versions of
a library. The removed symbols might have been private symbols that have
been hidden or they were public symbols that have been removed. Private
symbols should be removed from the symbols file. Removed symbols means
an ABI breakage and that version should not be packaged without
reintroducing the symbols or bumping the SONAME/etc. Another alternative
is that the symbols were introduced in a release candidate and removed
in the final release, I guess the symbols should be removed. Normally
when a symbol disappears the package will FTBFS with a message like the
below. Some people seem to just patch their symbols file with the lines
containing #MISSING instead of dealing with the issue properly and
hopefully a lintian warning would discourage that practice.
The problem is that you can't know automatically if you are in a case
where the symbols can safely be removed (private one, devel version with
unstable API, etc) or if you should shout at the maintainer.
I'm not sure that lintian can diagnose anything here.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Contribuez à Debian et gagnez un cahier de l'admin Debian Lenny :
http://www.ouaza.com/wp/2009/03/02/contribuer-a-debian-gagner-un-livre/
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