Package: lintian Version: 2.105.0 Severity: serious Justification: unsuitable for release in the release maanger's opinion X-Debbugs-Cc: stu...@debian.org
Dear Maintainer, Following up on a conversation in #debian-qa, the current wording of the classification tag "unmerged-usr" is problematic: C: unmerged-usr N: N: The named file is being installed in a legacy location. Modern Debian systems install this file under /usr. N: N: Please move this file to a suitable place under the "merged /usr" scheme. Please consult the provided N: references as to where that might be. N: N: Please refer to https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge, https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/MergedUsr, Bug#978636, N: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2020/11/#00232, https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2020/12/#00386, N: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/03/msg00001.html, https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=236, N: https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2019/228/Debian-usr-Merge, https://lwn.net/Articles/773342/, and N: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/ for details. N: N: Visibility: classification N: Show-Always: no N: Check: files/hierarchy/merged-usr N: This tag is a classification. There is no issue in your package. As noted in the discussion, there are two problems here: * The advice "Please move this file" contradicts the emerging consensus on the correct way to handle the transition. There has been a long discussion on debian-devel about this where more details can be found. This consensus may well change, of course, and then we would want lintian to be opinionated... but the advice given in the tag is contrary to the current position. * The tag is self-contradictory, offering both an instruction to act and also saying "There is no issue in your package." As indicated by a member of the Release Team in the discussion in #debian-qa, the first of these points is a serious problem for the bookworm development cycle and needs fixing. This bug is filed with serious severity in accordance with the BTS definition of serious: "in the release manager's opinion, makes the package unsuitable for release" [1]. [1] https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities Classification tags not shown by default but will still pop up and for a problem such as this may cause significant issues with bullseye→bookworm upgrades, it's important to get right. I'm filing this as a bug so that it doesn't accidentally get forgotten and to keep this change out of testing. regards Stuart
