Bug#1014255: Long lines should also be ignored from non-code text files

[Russ Allbery]

"Dr. Bas Wijnen"  writes:

> Axel writes that README.md and LICENSE are likely valid cases. I
> disagree.  While I (and I expect many developers in Debian) are used to
> using short lines in text files, this is not that common for other
> people. Many will use the automatic word-wrap feature of text editors
> and write a whole paragraph on a single line.

Or, if not a whole paragraph, there are pretty strong arguments for
following https://xkcd.com/1285/ whenever writing in any markup language,
including Markdown, which can lead to long lines for complex sentences.
That's the standard for our projects at my current employer.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Pending merge requests :)

[Louis-Philippe Véronneau]

Hello!

I was wondering if one of the lintian maintainers would be up to having 
a look at the current pending MRs on Salsa. There are quite a few, and 
merging the ones where the testsuite passes is always a good way to 
encourage further submissions.


After a cursory glance, here is a list of the ones I that look like they 
are in a good enough state to be merged:


* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/407
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/453
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/458
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/462
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/471
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/472
* https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/473

Cheers and thanks for maintaining Lintian!

--
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Louis-Philippe Véronneau
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   po...@debian.org / veronneau.org
  ⠈⠳⣄


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Bug#1014255: Long lines should also be ignored from non-code text files

[Louis-Philippe Véronneau]

On 2023-08-02 15 h 01, Dr. Bas Wijnen wrote:

Hi,

Axel writes that README.md and LICENSE are likely valid cases. I disagree.
While I (and I expect many developers in Debian) are used to using short lines
in text files, this is not that common for other people. Many will use the
automatic word-wrap feature of text editors and write a whole paragraph on a
single line.

I don't think I should ask upstream to reformat their non-code text files; it's
not a good use of their time, and also they would likely not even do it.

Instead, I hope lintian can avoid emitting this tag for non-code text files (in
particular: *.txt, *.html, *.md). Although CMakeLists.txt is probably an
exception: that is code and it shouldn't contain long lines.

I could add overrides, but I don't think this would be an appropriate case for
that. But please let me know if it is.

Thanks,
Bas



Note that the 'very-long-line-length-in-source-file' was marked as 
'experimental' in this commit [1] exactly for that kind of reason.


The default lintian mode doesn't use the 'experimental' tags and I would 
advise you not to include them if this tag is currently bothering you.


[1]: 
https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/commit/899bd1b683c479e166ebd465ff0ad101fbd04ee2


--
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Louis-Philippe Véronneau
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   po...@debian.org / veronneau.org
  ⠈⠳⣄



OpenPGP_0xE1E5457C8BAD4113.asc
Description: OpenPGP public key


OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Bug#1014255: Long lines should also be ignored from non-code text files

[Dr. Bas Wijnen]

Hi,

Axel writes that README.md and LICENSE are likely valid cases. I disagree.
While I (and I expect many developers in Debian) are used to using short lines
in text files, this is not that common for other people. Many will use the
automatic word-wrap feature of text editors and write a whole paragraph on a
single line.

I don't think I should ask upstream to reformat their non-code text files; it's
not a good use of their time, and also they would likely not even do it.

Instead, I hope lintian can avoid emitting this tag for non-code text files (in
particular: *.txt, *.html, *.md). Although CMakeLists.txt is probably an
exception: that is code and it shouldn't contain long lines.

I could add overrides, but I don't think this would be an appropriate case for
that. But please let me know if it is.

Thanks,
Bas