Hi Andreas, On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 08:47:51AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 04:46:23PM +0000, Jelmer Vernooij wrote: > > > > On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 04:17:50PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > > > I observed that lintian-brush is adding a file debian/upstream/metadata > > > if it finds the fields Upstream-Name and Upstream-Contact in > > > debian/copyright. > > > > > What is the sense to duplicate data that we can find in a well > > > established machine readable file in another file? > > That's a good question. > > > > I've considered (but not implemented yet) having lintian-brush not create a > > debian/upstream/metadata if the only upstream metadata fields it can set are > > the name and contact. > > It would be really great to implement this. Considering the current > situation I would even remove the fields Name and Contact from > debian/upstream/metadata if the according fields are in debian/copyright > (or move them if they are missing in d/copyright). If some empty > d/u/metadata remains this should be removed as well. > > IMHO a good rule of thumb is: Do not copy any data from some well > established machine readable file to some other place. Agreed, having data duplicated in two Debian-specific files seems unnecessary and bad.
> > At the moment, both the debian/copyright [1] and debian/upstream/metadata > > [2] > > standards both define two fields with (as far as I can tell) the same > > purpose. > > Neither of the standards provide any guidance as to whether the fields > > should be set in both files or whether e.g. one is preferred over the other. > > It would be great if some guidance could be added to DEP-12 about how to > > deal > > with these fields. > > DEP-12 is declared as "Work in progress" (without any progress since 5 > years) while DEP-5 is well established and decided. Charles and I > invented d/u/metadata to store publication information and it turned out > that there is other sensible information about upstream that can be > stored there as well. I'd vote against any duplication of information > in any way. So as long as Name and Contact are defined in DEP-5 it > should not be in DEP-12. > So far I removed redundant fields from the Wiki page[3] (it had also > Homepage, Watch and others I might have forgot) since it simply adds > useless maintenance burden to maintain the same information at different > places. Thanks for updating the specification. I think longer term it would actually make sense to put this information in debian/upstream/metadata rather than debian/copyright, so all upstream metadata is in one place - but that would obviously require a change to DEP-5 first. > The idea that lintian is warning about those fields missing in > d/u/metadata is not sensible, neither that some tool adds the values. > It was some Wiki edit away[4] to ensure you about this that this stuff > is really in flux and its better to not waste time on this without > discussing it first. > > I'd be really happy if lintian-brush would remove those values (please > let me know if you want me to file a bug report about this). I've implemented this. lintian-brush will attempt to update these fields in debian/copyright only and remove them from debian/upstream/metadata. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions. Cheers, Jelmer