Bug#648350: lintian: please check for XZ compression w/o pre-depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.6)

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On 2011-11-10 19:57, Aaron M. Ucko wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.5.3
> Severity: normal
> 
> It is possible these days to compress .deb data components with xz;
> however, installing the resulting packages requires dpkg (>= 1.15.6).
> Within Debian, that's no big deal, as stable (squeeze) has 1.15.8.x;
> however, propagation to Ubuntu fails without a corresponding
> Pre-Depends: setting, as their current long-term-support stable
> release (lucid) merely has 1.15.5.6ubuntuX.  AIUI, Ubuntu should be
> able to relax that policy next April or so; until then, though, it
> would be great if Lintian could catch such cases itself and give
> immediate feedback.  (As it is, the issue may not surface until an
> affected package hits testing, from which Ubuntu draws; the resulting
> churn is particularly painful given that the prime candidates for XZ
> compression tend to be large.)
> 
> Could you please add a check along those lines (perhaps cribbed from
> Ubuntu)?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> [...]

Hi,

This sounds like a serious/certain (E) tag on an Ubuntu, but what about
Debian?  Do we ignore the tag, since it is not an issue or do we emit
the tag anyway?  In the latter case, what severity do we give it?

~Niels