Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Alex Muntada]

Hi Jonas,

> I find it irrelevant¹ to list changes reverted or shadowed later
> within same release: Please cleanup auto-generated changelog,
> stripping parts not ending in the final package release.

At least in this particular case (iterating over URL changes in
the deb822 headers) I think this makes a lot of sense. IMHO,
the only meaningful change in the URLs is the current one since
the last released package version.

Cheers,
Alex

--
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Alex Muntada 
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   Debian Developer - log.alexm.org
  ⠈⠳⣄



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Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Paul Wise]

Control: close -1

On Sun, 2018-07-01 at 10:45 +0100, Chris Lamb wrote:

> Tagging as moreinfo for the time being...

The discussion has revealed that we do not have consensus on what
debian/changelog should look like in general so I close this bug.

I don't plan on starting any wider discussion on this topic but
I'll happily express my opinions if someone wants to work on this.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Processed: Re: Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Processing control commands:

> close -1
Bug #902797 [lintian] lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate 
contributor information
Marked Bug as done

-- 
902797: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=902797
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Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Florian Schlichting (2018-07-01 17:23:04)
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 11:37:21AM +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 12:39:47PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > > I recently saw a changelog entry (quoted below) for a Perl team 
> > > package where several contributors to that version had their names 
> > > mentioned multiple times with one or more changes below each 
> > > instance of their name. This made the changelog harder to read. I 
> > > think it would be useful for lintian to emit a pedantic or 
> > > info-level warning for duplicate contributor information in the 
> > > latest changelog entry.
> > 
> > I personally agree with you here, but apparently not everybody does. 
> > ISTR to remember in the past suggesting to change the default of dch 
> > --multimaint-merge but somebody complained that that way it would 
> > lose the chronological order of the changes or something like that 
> > (I don't really buy it).
> 
> I'm probably guilty of uploading a fair number of packages with such 
> changelogs over the last few days, as I'm working through a list of 
> perl team packages that haven't had an upload in over six years and 
> thus still point to SVN with their version in the archive.
> 
> Most of those changelog entries stem from (semi-)automatic mass 
> commits made over the years to our several thousand packages; and some 
> of them change the very same thing a previous entry modified. In the 
> example that Paul cited, Ansgar first changed the Vcs-* lines from 
> svn.d.o to git.d.o in 2011, then Salvatore changed git.d.o to 
> anonscm.d.o in 2013, git:// to https:// in 2016, and anonscm.d.o to 
> salsa.d.o in 2018, each time adding a commit with the change and one 
> that modified d/changelog using dch. If that last commit was made by 
> Ansgar again, wouldn't --multimaint-merge result in a confusing 
> changelog that lists final modifications before intermediate ones?
> 
> Having said that, I don't have a strong feeling about how changelogs 
> should look like, other than that the default behaviour of our tools 
> should agree with what lintian wants to see. In my use of d/changelog, 
> both as a packager and occasionally as a user looking at an installed 
> package, it's a mirror of the packaging repository's git history, very 
> likely auto-generated, and a bit redundant as a source of 
> information...

Lintian not complaining is not the same as lintian wanting us to tune 
tools for (in our opinion) improved readability.

I find it more readable to list each contributor only once.

Also (not exactly same but strongly related):

I find it irrelevant¹ to list changes reverted or shadowed later within 
same release: Please cleanup auto-generated changelog, stripping parts 
not ending in the final package release.


 - Jonas

¹ I thought Debian Policy had a passage that changelog should cover 
user-facing changes, but cannot find it now so maybe I imagined that.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


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Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Florian Schlichting]

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 11:37:21AM +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 12:39:47PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > I recently saw a changelog entry (quoted below) for a Perl team package
> > where several contributors to that version had their names mentioned
> > multiple times with one or more changes below each instance of their
> > name. This made the changelog harder to read. I think it would be
> > useful for lintian to emit a pedantic or info-level warning for
> > duplicate contributor information in the latest changelog entry.
> 
> I personally agree with you here, but apparently not everybody does.
> ISTR to remember in the past suggesting to change the default of dch
> --multimaint-merge but somebody complained that that way it would lose
> the chronological order of the changes or something like that (I don't
> really buy it).

I'm probably guilty of uploading a fair number of packages with such
changelogs over the last few days, as I'm working through a list of perl
team packages that haven't had an upload in over six years and thus still
point to SVN with their version in the archive.

Most of those changelog entries stem from (semi-)automatic mass commits
made over the years to our several thousand packages; and some of them
change the very same thing a previous entry modified. In the example
that Paul cited, Ansgar first changed the Vcs-* lines from svn.d.o to
git.d.o in 2011, then Salvatore changed git.d.o to anonscm.d.o in 2013,
git:// to https:// in 2016, and anonscm.d.o to salsa.d.o in 2018, each
time adding a commit with the change and one that modified d/changelog
using dch. If that last commit was made by Ansgar again, wouldn't
--multimaint-merge result in a confusing changelog that lists final
modifications before intermediate ones?

Having said that, I don't have a strong feeling about how changelogs
should look like, other than that the default behaviour of our tools
should agree with what lintian wants to see. In my use of d/changelog,
both as a packager and occasionally as a user looking at an installed
package, it's a mirror of the packaging repository's git history, very
likely auto-generated, and a bit redundant as a source of information...

Florian

Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Adam D. Barratt]

On Sun, 2018-07-01 at 11:37 +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 12:39:47PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > I recently saw a changelog entry (quoted below) for a Perl team
> > package
> > where several contributors to that version had their names
> > mentioned
> > multiple times with one or more changes below each instance of
> > their
> > name. This made the changelog harder to read. I think it would be
> > useful for lintian to emit a pedantic or info-level warning for
> > duplicate contributor information in the latest changelog entry.
> 
> I personally agree with you here, but apparently not everybody does.
> ISTR to remember in the past suggesting to change the default of dch
> --multimaint-merge but somebody complained that that way it would
> lose the chronological order of the changes or something like that (I
> don't really buy it).
> 

When I initially added the merging functionality, I made it the
default. Joey Hess objected, and said that he'd intentionally
implemented the "strictly chronological" ordering, so it was made a
non-default option.

Regards,

Adam

Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Chris Lamb]

tags 902797 + moreinfo
thanks

Hi Mattia & Paul,

> I personally agree with you here, but apparently not everybody does.

Mm, I can see both sides although agree with you both in that each
changelog entry should be a summary of sorts rather than be
*internally* chronological, etc. etc.

Tagging as moreinfo for the time being...


Regards,

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

Processed: Re: Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Processing commands for cont...@bugs.debian.org:

> tags 902797 + moreinfo
Bug #902797 [lintian] lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate 
contributor information
Added tag(s) moreinfo.
> thanks
Stopping processing here.

Please contact me if you need assistance.
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Bug#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Mattia Rizzolo]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 12:39:47PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> I recently saw a changelog entry (quoted below) for a Perl team package
> where several contributors to that version had their names mentioned
> multiple times with one or more changes below each instance of their
> name. This made the changelog harder to read. I think it would be
> useful for lintian to emit a pedantic or info-level warning for
> duplicate contributor information in the latest changelog entry.

I personally agree with you here, but apparently not everybody does.
ISTR to remember in the past suggesting to change the default of dch
--multimaint-merge but somebody complained that that way it would lose
the chronological order of the changes or something like that (I don't
really buy it).

At any rate, from what I see in my apt-listchanges output the perl team
is the main team that would be affected, I recommend getting in touch
with them before any action is taken.  And if anything is done, dch's
default should be changed a well.

-- 
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#902797: lintian: check latest changelog entry for duplicate contributor information

[Paul Wise]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.91
Severity: wishlist

I recently saw a changelog entry (quoted below) for a Perl team package
where several contributors to that version had their names mentioned
multiple times with one or more changes below each instance of their
name. This made the changelog harder to read. I think it would be
useful for lintian to emit a pedantic or info-level warning for
duplicate contributor information in the latest changelog entry. 

Earlier changelog entries are historical information and probably not
worth fixing but the latest one will presumably be the entry being
prepared before upload. In order to ignore all the existing entries on
lintian.d.o, this check could be applied only to UNRELEASED entries.

libdigest-hmac-perl (1.03+dfsg-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Team upload

  [ Ansgar Burchardt ]
  * debian/control: Convert Vcs-* fields to Git.

  [ Salvatore Bonaccorso ]
  * debian/copyright: Replace DEP5 Format-Specification URL from
svn.debian.org to anonscm.debian.org URL.

  [ gregor herrmann ]
  * debian/control: update {versioned,alternative} (build) dependencies.

  [ Salvatore Bonaccorso ]
  * Change Vcs-Git to canonical URI (git://anonscm.debian.org)
  * Change search.cpan.org based URIs to metacpan.org based URIs

  [ gregor herrmann ]
  * Update debian/repack.stub.

  [ Axel Beckert ]
  * debian/copyright: migrate pre-1.0 format to 1.0 using "cme fix dpkg-
copyright"

  [ gregor herrmann ]
  * Strip trailing slash from metacpan URLs.

  [ Salvatore Bonaccorso ]
  * Update Vcs-Browser URL to cgit web frontend
  * debian/control: Use HTTPS transport protocol for Vcs-Git URI

  [ gregor herrmann ]
  * debian/copyright: change Copyright-Format 1.0 URL to HTTPS.
  * Switch repackaging framework to Files-Excluded method.
  * Remove Carlo Segre from Uploaders. Thanks for your work!
  * Remove Zak B. Elep from Uploaders on request of the MIA team
(Closes: #863529)

  [ Salvatore Bonaccorso ]
  * Update Vcs-* headers for switch to salsa.debian.org

  [ Florian Schlichting ]
  * Bump dh compat to level 11
  * Declare compliance with Debian Policy 4.1.4

 -- Florian Schlichting   Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:53:39 +0200

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing-debug
  APT policy: (900, 'testing-debug'), (900, 'testing'), (800, 
'unstable-debug'), (800, 'unstable'), (790, 'buildd-unstable'), (700, 
'experimental-debug'), (700, 'experimental'), (690, 'buildd-experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.16.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils   2.30.90.20180627-1
ii  bzip2  1.0.6-8.1
ii  diffstat   1.61-1+b1
ii  dpkg   1.19.0.5+b1
ii  file   1:5.33-3
ii  gettext0.19.8.1-6+b1
ii  intltool-debian0.35.0+20060710.4
ii  libapt-pkg-perl0.1.34
ii  libarchive-zip-perl1.60-1
ii  libclass-accessor-perl 0.51-1
ii  libclone-perl  0.39-1
ii  libdpkg-perl   1.19.0.5
ii  libemail-valid-perl1.202-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl   0.08-1
ii  libipc-run-perl20180523.0-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl 0.416-1+b3
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-12
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl   0.13-1
ii  libtimedate-perl   2.3000-2
ii  liburi-perl1.74-1
ii  libxml-simple-perl 2.25-1
ii  libyaml-libyaml-perl   0.69+repack-1
ii  man-db 2.8.3-2
ii  patchutils 0.3.4-2
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]  5.26.2-6
ii  t1utils1.41-2
ii  xz-utils   5.2.2-1.3

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl  0.19-1+b4

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
ii  binutils-multiarch 2.30.90.20180627-1
ii  dpkg-dev   1.19.0.5
ii  libhtml-parser-perl3.72-3+b2
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.53-1

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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