Debian Bug report logs - #801647
lintian: Warn on whitespace around name in changelog

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ben Wiederhake <BenWiederhake.GitHub@gmx.de>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: lintian: Warn on whitespace around name in changelog

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 01:29:27 +0200

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.38
Severity: wishlist

debian/changelog is a partly automatically generated file, partly manually
edited.
I probably did something wrong to even notice this edge case, but still.

Given a debian/changelog that ends with, for example:

"""
 --  Hugues Morisset <morisset.hugues@gmail.com>  Fri, 02 Oct 2015 14:13:47
+0100
"""

And given a debian/control that contains, among others:

"""
Maintainer: Hugues Morisset <morisset.hugues@gmail.com>
"""

Then lintian complains (correctly!) about the current version being a NMU,
i.e., changelog-should-mention-nmu and source-nmu-has-incorrect-version-number.

For a Debian newbie, this is very confusing.

To make it easier to resolve issues like this, I would like to "wish" for an
*additional* warning message like this:

"""
The most recent changelog entry is from " Hugues Morisset
<morisset.hugues@gmail.com>". The control file lists "Hugues Morisset
<morisset.hugues@gmail.com>" as a maintainer. These count as different people
only due to differing whitespace, even though the address is identical. If this
dissociation is unintended, please correct the whitespace issue in the
changelog.
"""

I'm horrible at designing warning messages, but I hope I could explain why,
what, and how this is happening; and why it's pretty unintuitive.

As indicated in the fictive warning message, I would suggest checking the "raw"
email address of the changelog against the "raw" email address of each
maintainer and uploader. If the address matches but the name doesn't, then the
packager most definitely did not intend this.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.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                       2.25.1-3
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-8
ii  diffstat                       1.60-1
ii  file                           1:5.25-2
ii  gettext                        0.19.6-1
ii  hardening-includes             2.7
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.4
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29+b3
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.53-1
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.38-1
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.18.3
ii  libemail-valid-perl            1.196-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.07-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.94-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.413-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-8
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.13-1
ii  libtimedate-perl               2.3000-2
ii  liburi-perl                    1.69-1
ii  man-db                         2.7.3-1
ii  patchutils                     0.3.4-1
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.20.2-6
ii  t1utils                        1.38-4
ii  xz-utils                       5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  dpkg                            1.18.3
pn  libperlio-gzip-perl             <none>
ii  perl                            5.20.2-6
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.20.2-6

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
ii  binutils-multiarch     2.25.1-3
ii  dpkg-dev               1.18.3
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-2
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.46-1
pn  libyaml-perl           <none>

-- no debconf information

Message #8 received at 801647@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>

To: Ben Wiederhake <BenWiederhake.GitHub@gmx.de>, 801647@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#801647: lintian: Warn on whitespace around name in changelog

Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 21:07:30 +0200

Hi Ben!

Thanks for the bug report.

* Ben Wiederhake <BenWiederhake.GitHub@gmx.de>, 2015-10-13, 01:29:
>Given a debian/changelog that ends with, for example:
>
>"""
> --  Hugues Morisset <morisset.hugues@gmail.com>  Fri, 02 Oct 2015 14:13:47
>+0100
>"""
>
>And given a debian/control that contains, among others:
>
>"""
>Maintainer: Hugues Morisset <morisset.hugues@gmail.com>
>"""
>
>Then lintian complains (correctly!) about the current version being a 
>NMU, i.e., changelog-should-mention-nmu and 
>source-nmu-has-incorrect-version-number.
>
>For a Debian newbie, this is very confusing.

Agreed. Experienced maintainers are used to the fact that these tags 
often mean something else that their name suggests, but this is really 
unfriendly to newcomers. We should fix it.

>To make it easier to resolve issues like this, I would like to "wish" 
>for an *additional* warning message like this:
>
>"""
>The most recent changelog entry is from " Hugues Morisset 
><morisset.hugues@gmail.com>". The control file lists "Hugues Morisset 
><morisset.hugues@gmail.com>" as a maintainer. These count as different 
>people only due to differing whitespace, even though the address is 
>identical. If this dissociation is unintended, please correct the 
>whitespace issue in the changelog.
>"""

We should probably just add a new tag about extra whitespace around name 
in the changelog trailer.

We should also normalize whitespace when comparing names, since it's 
obviously not significant.

>As indicated in the fictive warning message, I would suggest checking 
>the "raw" email address of the changelog against the "raw" email 
>address of each maintainer and uploader. If the address matches but the 
>name doesn't, then the packager most definitely did not intend this.

Yes, I think it would make sense to only compare e-mail addresses for 
NMU detection. We should still complain when there's real name 
mismatch, because that's likely a mistake, but that could be a separate 
tag.

-- 
Jakub Wilk

Message #17 received at 801647-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>

To: 801647-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#801647: fixed in lintian 2.5.44

Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 07:21:57 +0000

Source: lintian
Source-Version: 2.5.44

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
lintian, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 801647@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net> (supplier of updated lintian package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Format: 1.8
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 06:25:53 +0000
Source: lintian
Binary: lintian
Architecture: source
Version: 2.5.44
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Lintian Maintainers <lintian-maint@debian.org>
Changed-By: Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>
Description:
 lintian    - Debian package checker
Closes: 612610 754315 766099 796093 800438 800476 801647 803164 807892 809577 812568 812962 813587 816341 816454 816862 818607 819509 819560 821902 822269 822281
Changes:
 lintian (2.5.44) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Summary of tag changes:
     + Added:
       - build-depends-arch-without-arch-dependant-binary
       - changelog-references-temp-security-identifier
       - ctrl-script
       - debian-build-system
       - debian-changelog-has-wrong-day-of-week
       - extra-whitespace-around-name-in-changelog-trailer
       - invalid-versioned-provides
       - maintscript-calls-ldconfig
       - no-ctrl-scripts
       - package-has-unnecessary-activation-of-ldconfig-trigger
       - package-must-activate-ldconfig-trigger
       - source-format
     + Removed:
       - debian-changelog-has-wrong-weekday
       - description-contains-duplicated-word
       - dh_pysupport-is-obsolete
       - missing-dependency-on-python-support
       - postinst-has-useless-call-to-ldconfig
       - postinst-must-call-ldconfig
       - postrm-has-useless-call-to-ldconfig
       - postrm-should-call-ldconfig
       - postrm-unsafe-ldconfig
       - preinst-calls-ldconfig
       - prerm-calls-ldconfig
       - versioned-provides
 .
   * checks/changelog-file.{desc,pm}:
     + [JW,NT] Use "day of week" rather than "weekday".
       (Closes: #796093)
     + [JW,NT] Flag references to "TEMP" security identifiers.
       Thanks to Paul Wise for assisting with the regex.
       (Closes: #807892)
   * checks/control-files.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Add classification tags for (absence of) maintscripts.
   * checks/debhelper.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Add tag for classifying the build system.
     + [NT] Remove test for dh_pysupport usage.
     + [NT] Avoid advertising python-support as possible solution for
       python-depends-but-no-python-helper.  Thanks to Gunnar Wolf for
       the bug report.  (Closes: #754315)
     + [NT] Apply patch from Gergely Nagy to only emit the
       dh-exec-useless-usage check for install and manpages files.
       Thanks to Rafael Laboissière for the report.
       (Closes: #816341)
   * checks/debian-source-dir.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Add tag for classifying the source format.
       (Closes: #612610)
   * checks/description.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Drop duplicate word tag, which is now covered by the
       spelling error check.
   * checks/fields.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Add default-jdk-headless and openjdk-X-jdk-headless
       to the set of known java providers.
     + [JW] Relax build profile dependency checks to allow versions with
       trailing tilde.  (Closes: #819509)  Thanks to Felix Geyer for the bug
       report.
     + [NT] Expand the vcs-field-uses-insecure-uri check to check other
       known insecure protocols (e.g. svn and pserver).  Thanks to Paul
       "(UTF-8) Snowman" Tagliamonte for the report.  (Closes: #812962)
     + [NT] Use https URL in the correction for canonical VCS URLs.
       (Closes: #813587)
     + [NT] Bump known python 3 version to include 3.4 and 3.5.
     + [AB] package-relation-with-perl-modules: Remove "experimental" flag.
       Asked for by Dominic Hargreaves.
     + [NT] Apply patch from Mattia Rizzolo to make lintian know and check
       the Build-Depends-Arch field.  (Closes: #822281)
     + [NT] Stop emitting tags for (valid) versioned provides.  Thanks to
       Thorsten Glaser for the bug report.  (Closes: #800438)
   * checks/files.pm:
     + [JW] Apply patch from Mathieu Parent to fix directories for PHP INI
       files.
     + [NT] Remove code related to python-support.
   * checks/nmu.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Create a separate tag for extra whitespace around uploader name
       in the changelog.  Thanks to Ben Wiederhake for the suggestion.
       (Closes: #801647)
   * checks/phppear.{desc,pm}:
     + [JW] Apply patch from Mathieu Parent to make dh-php* and php*-dev
       package names unversioned.
   * checks/rules.pm:
     + [NT] Add ":any" to all python dependencies.  Thanks to Barry Warsaw
       for reporting the bug.
     + [NT] Bump known python 3 version to include 3.4 and 3.5.
     + [NT] Remove check for python-support and python-central.
   * checks/scripts.desc:
     + [NT] Suggest dh_python2 / dh_python3 instead of dh_pysupport and
       dh_pycentral.  Thanks to Neil Williams for the report.
       (Closes: #818607)
   * checks/shared-libs.{desc,pm}:
     + [NT] Rename and clarify some ldconfig related tags to better reflect
       the use of the ldconfig trigger.  Thanks to Rafael Laboissière for
       reporting this.  (Closes: #809577)
     + [NT] Merge and remove some ldconfig related tags.  Notably
       unconditionally flag all uses of ldconfig in maintainer scripts
       (outside glibc) as these should be replaced by a trigger.
   * checks/version-substvars.pm:
     + [NT] Apply patch from Javier Serrano Polo that makes the check
       ignore all multi-arch quantifiers (when determining if the
       dependency is for an external package).  (Closes: #822269)
 .
   * commands/info.pm:
     + [NT] Accept "--tag" as an alias of "--tags".  Thanks to Robert
       Luberda for the suggestion.  (Closes: #816454)
   * commands/lintian:
     + [NT] Also check DEBRELEASE_DEBS_DIR for .changes files when no
       packages are given on the command line.  Thanks to Sean Whitton for
       the suggestion.  (Closes: #812568)
     + [NT] Clean up entries in temporarily labs fully once they have been
       processed.  This avoids accumulating files on the disk for archive-
       wide runs done in temporary labs.  This mitigates some of the
       excessive disk usage for archive-wide runs  (See #779228).
   * commands/reporting-lintian-harness.pm:
     + [NT] Add support for classification tags.
 .
   * data/debhelper/*:
     + [JW] Refresh against unstable.  Thanks to Mathieu Parent for the bug
       report.
   * data/debhelper/dh_addons-manual:
     + [NT] Add ":any" to the dependencies for the python add-ons.  Thanks
       to Barry Warsaw for reporting the bug.  (Closes: #803164)
     + [NT] Remove entry for pysupport.
   * data/fields/virtual-packages:
     + [NT] Refresh against unstable main (amd64).
   * data/files/fonts:
     + [NT] Refresh against unstable main (amd64).
   * data/menu-format/known-desktop-keys:
     + [NT] Accept "DesktopNames" as a known key in desktop files.  Thanks
       to Yves-Alexis Perez for the suggestion.  (Closes: #766099)
   * data/spelling/corrections:
     + [JW] Add more corrections.
   * data/standards-version/release-dates:
     + [AB] Add 3.9.8.
 .
   * debian/control:
     + [AB] Declare compliance with Debian Policy 3.9.8. (No other changes
       required.)
   * debian/lintian.install:
     + [NT] Install Test::Lintian modules in Perl5 module path and remove
       the Lintian::Tutorial files (as they are just POD files).
   * debian/{manpages,rules}:
     + [JW,NT] Generate and install manpages of Lintian's perl modules.
       (Closes: #816862)
 .
   * doc/lintian.xml:
     + [NT] Document the new classification tags.
 .
   * lib/Lintian/*{,/*}.pm:
     + [NT] Add support for classification tags.
   * lib/Lintian/Check.pm:
     + [JW,NT] Flag a duplicate word as a spelling error.  This affects
       several tags plus spellintian.  (Closes: #800476)
   * lib/Lintian/Collect/Binary.pm:
     + [JW] Apply patch from Ben Hutchings to consider source versions when
       testing nativeness of binary packages.  (Closes: #821902)
   * lib/Lintian/Relation.pm:
     + [JW,NT] Fix broken implication with "P (<< V)" relations.
       (Closes: #819560)
   * lib/Lintian/Tag/Info.pm:
     + [JW] Use HTTPS for manpages.debian.org URLs.
   * lib/Lintian/Unpacker.pm:
     + [NT] Name the subprocess after what is processing.
 .
   * private/refresh-debhelper-data:
     + [JW] Apply patch from Mathieu Parent to fix path to Contents files.
 .
   * reporting/*:
     + [NT] Add support for classification tags.
 .
   * vendors/ubuntu/main/data/changes-file/known-dists:
     + [NT] Apply patch from Mattia Rizzolo to add yakkety.
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 e09b584c97fda0b8d44466413d9250b50fc669bb 1298584 lintian_2.5.44.tar.xz
Checksums-Sha256:
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 7020e2c9f87e65ee9fc469a53c41e599b2f82e0ecb77905fcf4c39f15812df3d 1298584 lintian_2.5.44.tar.xz
Files:
 be3ef40e1e4f6e802d10968dddb2527f 2809 devel optional lintian_2.5.44.dsc
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