Re: Editor extensions to help editing debian/* files?

[Otto Kekäläinen <otto@kekalainen.net>]

Hi!

Thanks for the tip, Niels!

It would be cool if dh_assistant had some kind of generic command like
"dh_assistant validate" which would attempt to introspect all
information silently and emit output only if it fails to parse
something. Additionally it could emit a non-zero exit code on errors.
I tested your latest command and it works as you expected, though it
does not use exit code.

# dh_assistant detect-unknown-hook-targets
The hook target override_dh_car_configure in debian/rules does not
seem to match any known commands.
# echo $?
0

Also if the JSON included the filename and line number of the finding
it would be handy:

{
   "unknown-hook-targets": [
      {
         "candidates": [],
         "filename": "debian/rules",
         "target-name": "override_dh_car_configure"
      }
   ]
}


I don't know how much ambition you have for expanding the scope of
dh_assistant. We already have Lintian which has a massive amount of
checks, including ones related to debian/rules. It is just a pity
Lintian does not support checking a single file or the debian/
directory contents without building the package.. [1]

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/262783