[Bug 1303603] Re: bad-distribution-in-changes-file unstable

[Niels Thykier]

On 2014-11-12 11:56, Rolf Leggewie wrote:
> I think this needs further discussion, then.
> 

Hi Rolf,

Thanks for your interest in this matter.

Please note that my remarks here are from the perspective of Lintian
upstream and /not/ Ubuntu.

> Quite obviously, the current setup goes against the expectations of many
> users.


Unfortunately, it is not clear to me that this is as obvious and
clear-cut as you suggest it to be.  The current way Lintian finds the
default profile is:

 1) On $DISTRO, Lintian defaults to the $DISTRO profile.
    - if said profile is present, stop here!
 2) Try from 1) again with DISTRO=$(parentof $DISTRO) if there is a
    parent distribution of $DISTRO
 3) Abort.

Since both Debian and Ubuntu has a profile, we get (simplified):

 * On Ubuntu, Lintian defaults to the Ubuntu profile.
 * On Debian, Lintian defaults to the Debian profile.

If I was an Ubuntu developer and only made packages for Ubuntu, I would
want my lintian to use the Ubuntu rule set.  Like:

 * Warn if I (or a tool) had chosen "unstable" as target for my upload.
 * Do /not/ warn about various Debian-only NMU policies.
 * Etc.

> I routinely run lintian from within pbuilder and that switch
> isn't set (and I wonder if it should).

It is certainly a valid solution to have pbuilder pass --profile,
although I am not sure pbuilder can compute the desired profile value
automatically for each chroot.  A different alternative is to run
lintian /inside/ the chroot.

 * Inside a Debian chroot lintian will accurately determine that it
   should default to Debian policies.
 * Alternatively, you can set LINTIAN_PROFILE in the ENV or in your
   ~/.lintianrc (or in your XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lintian/.lintianrc) to
   the desired profile.

> Looks a lot like an Ubuntuism to me.

If anything, it is an "upstreamism".

 * You are very welcome to propose an alternative solution to the
   current profile setup.  I would certainly be interested in hearing
   it.
   - Though in that case, we should probably move the discussion
     upstream to the Debian BTS.

The current implementation comes from the following sources - though
note that we have diverged from specs proposed back then in a few ways:

 * https://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2011/04/msg00277.html
 * https://wiki.debian.org/Lintian/Spec/VendorCustomization

Somewhere down the line we also hooked a few more items on the profiles.
 Notably vendor specific data files and third-party checks.

> I don't understand why lintian on Ubuntu complains and should
> continue to complain about the unstable release pocket.  Please explain
> if there are valid reasons this must be so.
> 

I hope the above already explained this.  If not, by all means please
ask clarifying questions.

Thanks,
~Niels

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1303603

Title:
   bad-distribution-in-changes-file unstable

Status in lintian package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  from a pbuilder run on a trusty host

  Setting up lintian (2.5.22ubuntu1) ...
  Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-0ubuntu3) ...
  +++ lintian output +++
  E: libcapi20-3 changes: bad-distribution-in-changes-file unstable

  that's pretty shocking.  The information about valid distro release
  pockets should be carved out to the distro-info package (bug 1012459)

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