Bug#943525: lintian: Create private name spaces for tags

[Chris Lamb]

Felix Lechner wrote:

> (2) How can we mitigate potential breakage for custom profiles
> such as FTP Master and pkg-perl-tools, as well as for downstream users
> in Debian derivatives?

FTP master (rather, the "prime" dak instance) can be changed with so
little delay that we shouldn't worry too much about that particular
case. We may cause more problems just directly outside of Debian (eg.
Ubuntu's use of Lintian) or — as you mention — where the usage of
profiles is distributed across a team.

> debian/changelog:malformed-version

None of these is perfect but this is far the least problematic for
me (eg. "->" is multiple character, ">" and "#" would require escaping
on the command line, "@" appears to add a misleading meaning etc. etc.)


Regards,

-- 
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 : :'  : Chris Lamb
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   `-

Bug#943525: lintian: Create private name spaces for tags

[Felix Lechner]

Package: lintian
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

Tags currently reside in a global name space, which has many
drawbacks. Based on my difficulties of separating reused tags in the
'files' family of checks, the time is right to implement private name
spaces. Then two checks can share the same tag name without a
conflict.

Some things may break, like overrides. We can probably fix those by
adding the name changes to data/override/renamed-tags.

I am happy to present advantages if someone wants to hang on to the
current setup.

For now, let's focus on:

(1) What's the best tag format?
(2) How can we mitigate potential breakage for custom profiles
such as FTP Master and pkg-perl-tools, as well as for downstream users
in Debian derivatives?

Here are some suggestions for the format:

debian/changelog/malformed-version
debian/changelog:malformed-version
debian/changelog->malformed-version
debian/changelog@malformed-version
debian/changelog#malformed-version
malformed-version
debian/changelog^malformed-version

Putting the check up front means the tags sort naturally. Also, some
formats interfere less with shell scripts than others. All suggestions
are welcome. Which is your favorite?

Kind regards,
Felix Lechner