Mattia Rizzolo <mat...@debian.org> writes: > On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 10:49:55AM +0100, Christopher Baines wrote: > > I have added the Python version to the extended description, which > > fixes these lintian issues. > > Yes, that's probably the most common fix for > duplicate-long-description :)
I see the smiley face, and I'm glad the issue is addressed. But this discussion reminds me of a more general point that needs to be made more loudly: Please remember that you are not doing these things to placate Lintian. It is not a deity to be appeased; it is a tool that serves us in making improvements to our packages. We are not pleasing Lintian by these changes. Instead, you are doing these things because they are recommended by Policy (in this case, §3.4). This may sound like a small difference, but it has a big effect. When addressing a Lintian tag, your description of the change (in the VCS commit message, or in the Debian changelog entry, etc.) should never say “make Lintian happy” or the like; that is useless noise, and makes for an unhelpful change log. Instead, say *how the change improves* the package. Best if the description does not mention Lintian at all, but only talks about the improvement. You can only do this by abandoning the fantasy that Lintian has any agency in the matter. Despite how convenient it may be to think that way as a short cut, Lintian is not an agent, and these are not “Lintian issues”. They are issues in the package (or they are not issues at all), regardless of what Lintian has to say. Your fellow Debian developers, and users of your package, are the audience for the changes. -- \ “Repetition leads to boredom, boredom to horrifying mistakes, | `\ horrifying mistakes to God-I-wish-I-was-still-bored, and it | _o__) goes downhill from there.” —Will Larson, 2008-11-04 | Ben Finney