Debian Bug report logs - #661808
lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification

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Package: lintian; Maintainer for lintian is Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>; Source for lintian is src:lintian (PTS, buildd, popcon).

Reported by: Jakub Wilk <[email protected]>

Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:09:02 UTC

Severity: minor

Found in version lintian/2.5.5

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Report forwarded to [email protected], [email protected], Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>:
Bug#661808; Package lintian. (Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:09:05 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Message #3 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jakub Wilk <[email protected]>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <[email protected]>
Subject: lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 14:06:03 +0100
Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.5
Severity: minor

$ lintian-info -t unknown-field-in-templates | grep -A 1 Refer
N:   Refer to Configuration management (Templates) and the debconf-devel(7)
N:   manual page for details.

If there is no hyperlink, it's not immediately obvious that 
"Configuration management" is title of the document better known as the 
debconf specification.

I noticed that because I wanted to add copyright-format to our list of 
manuals. It would share the same problem and the produced output would 
be even less helpful:

N:   Refer to Machine-readable debian/copyright file for details.

Is this something we should fix or lintian (by adding some extra code to 
private/refresh-manual-refs)? Or should it be fixed on the debian-policy 
side?

-- 
Jakub Wilk




Information forwarded to [email protected], Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>:
Bug#661808; Package lintian. (Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:09:07 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Acknowledgement sent to Niels Thykier <[email protected]>:
Extra info received and forwarded to list. Copy sent to Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>. (Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:09:07 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Message #8 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Niels Thykier <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bug#661808: lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:06:24 +0200
On 2012-03-01 14:06, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.5.5
> Severity: minor
> 
> $ lintian-info -t unknown-field-in-templates | grep -A 1 Refer
> N:   Refer to Configuration management (Templates) and the debconf-devel(7)
> N:   manual page for details.
> 
> If there is no hyperlink, it's not immediately obvious that
> "Configuration management" is title of the document better known as the
> debconf specification.
> 
> I noticed that because I wanted to add copyright-format to our list of
> manuals. It would share the same problem and the produced output would
> be even less helpful:
> 
> N:   Refer to Machine-readable debian/copyright file for details.
> 
> Is this something we should fix or lintian (by adding some extra code to
> private/refresh-manual-refs)? Or should it be fixed on the debian-policy
> side?
> 

Russ, do you have a preference here?

~Niels





Information forwarded to [email protected], Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>:
Bug#661808; Package lintian. (Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:45:03 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Acknowledgement sent to Niels Thykier <[email protected]>:
Extra info received and forwarded to list. Copy sent to Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>. (Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:45:03 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Message #13 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Niels Thykier <[email protected]>
To: [email protected], Russ Allbery <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Bug#661808: lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:41:44 +0100
On 2012-07-11 15:06, Niels Thykier wrote:
> On 2012-03-01 14:06, Jakub Wilk wrote:
>> Package: lintian
>> Version: 2.5.5
>> Severity: minor
>>
>> $ lintian-info -t unknown-field-in-templates | grep -A 1 Refer
>> N:   Refer to Configuration management (Templates) and the debconf-devel(7)
>> N:   manual page for details.
>>
>> If there is no hyperlink, it's not immediately obvious that
>> "Configuration management" is title of the document better known as the
>> debconf specification.
>>
>> I noticed that because I wanted to add copyright-format to our list of
>> manuals. It would share the same problem and the produced output would
>> be even less helpful:
>>
>> N:   Refer to Machine-readable debian/copyright file for details.
>>
>> Is this something we should fix or lintian (by adding some extra code to
>> private/refresh-manual-refs)? Or should it be fixed on the debian-policy
>> side?
>>
> 
> Russ, do you have a preference here?
> 
> ~Niels
> 

Hi Russ,

I don't think we have heard from you on this matter, so I have taken the
liberty of CC'ing directly.

Do you think the titles should be changed in debian-policy or should we
have refresh-manual-refs ammend the names in these cases?

~Niels




Information forwarded to [email protected], Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>:
Bug#661808; Package lintian. (Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:33:03 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Acknowledgement sent to Russ Allbery <[email protected]>:
Extra info received and forwarded to list. Copy sent to Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>. (Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:33:03 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Message #18 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Russ Allbery <[email protected]>
To: Niels Thykier <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bug#661808: lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:28:26 -0800
Niels Thykier <[email protected]> writes:
> On 2012-07-11 15:06, Niels Thykier wrote:
>> On 2012-03-01 14:06, Jakub Wilk wrote:

>>> $ lintian-info -t unknown-field-in-templates | grep -A 1 Refer
>>> N:   Refer to Configuration management (Templates) and the debconf-devel(7)
>>> N:   manual page for details.
>>>
>>> If there is no hyperlink, it's not immediately obvious that
>>> "Configuration management" is title of the document better known as the
>>> debconf specification.
>>>
>>> I noticed that because I wanted to add copyright-format to our list of
>>> manuals. It would share the same problem and the produced output would
>>> be even less helpful:
>>>
>>> N:   Refer to Machine-readable debian/copyright file for details.
>>>
>>> Is this something we should fix or lintian (by adding some extra code to
>>> private/refresh-manual-refs)? Or should it be fixed on the debian-policy
>>> side?

>> Russ, do you have a preference here?

> I don't think we have heard from you on this matter, so I have taken the
> liberty of CC'ing directly.

Ack, sorry, I missed that.

> Do you think the titles should be changed in debian-policy or should we
> have refresh-manual-refs ammend the names in these cases?

We can change the titles; that's fairly easy to do.  What do you have in
mind?  Something like Configuration Management Specification instead?  I'm
not sure what would be clearest.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email protected])               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



Information forwarded to [email protected], Debian Lintian Maintainers <[email protected]>:
Bug#661808; Package lintian. (Thu, 24 Jan 2013 17:15:03 GMT) (full text, mbox, link).


Message #21 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jakub Wilk <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bug#661808: lintian: non-obvious references to debconf specification
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:14:13 +0100
* Russ Allbery <[email protected]>, 2013-01-18, 11:28:
>>>>If there is no hyperlink, it's not immediately obvious that 
>>>>"Configuration management" is title of the document better known as 
>>>>the debconf specification.
[...]
>>Do you think the titles should be changed in debian-policy or should 
>>we have refresh-manual-refs ammend the names in these cases?
>We can change the titles; that's fairly easy to do.  What do you have 
>in mind?  Something like Configuration Management Specification 
>instead?  I'm not sure what would be clearest.

"Configuration Management Specification" sounds good to me.

-- 
Jakub Wilk



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