Debian Build Toolchain - Sanity Checks With lintian

Sanity Checks With lintian

This tool provides automated checks for common packaging mistakes in both binary and source packages, including Debian policy violations and potential compatibility problems.

While a maintainer typically aims to correct all issues pointed out by lintian, different distributions can have different policies regarding them. For example, Ubuntu requires all packages originating in Ubuntu to be clean, but for a package merged into Ubuntu from Debian, there is no such requirement: new changes should simply not introduce any warnings in addition to existing ones. This is done to minimize the divergence between Debian and Ubuntu packages.

Here are example lintian outputs:

W: foo source: source-contains-CVS-dir config/CVS N: N: Package contains a CVS directory. It was most likely included by N: accident, since transient CVS data usually doesn't belong in packages. N: Export from CVS rather than use a checkout. N: W: libfoo-dev: debian-changelog-line-too-long line 2 N: N: The given line of the latest changelog entry is over 80 columns. Such N: changelog entries may look poor in terminal windows and mail messages N: and be annoying to read. Please wrap changelog entries at 80 columns N: or less where possible. N: I: foo: arch-dep-package-has-big-usr-share 3399kB 77% N: N: The package has a significant amount of architecture-independent data N: in /usr/share, while it is an architecture-dependent package. This is N: wasteful of mirror space and bandwidth, as we then end up with N: multiple copies of this data, one for each architecture. N: N: If the data in /usr/share is not architecture-independent, it is a N: policy violation, and in this case, you should move that data N: elsewhere. N: N: See also: N: http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ch-best-pkging-practice N: s#s-bpp-archindepdata

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