Bug#663516: lintian: Should we retire old/reundant tags

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On 2012-03-11 23:29, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net> writes:
> 
>> The following tags are no longer emitted by any package in the entire
>> archive and I suspect no packager will trigger them.
> 
>>  use-of-compat-symlink
> 
> This is a mistake that someone could still make with /usr/bin/X11 since
> the symlink still exists.  I'd rather keep this one until all the symlinks
> that it is referring to are no longer installed on Debian systems.
> 

I had missed the usr/bin/X11 symlink.  So fair enough, lets keep this.

>>  loads-obsolete-confmodule
> 
> Likewise, these files still exist, so someone could mistakenly use them.
> We should drop this tag at the point that debconf stops including them so
> scripts will just error out.  (Perhaps it's worth suggesting to debconf
> that now is the time.)
> 

Will do then.

>>  binary-nmu-uses-old-version-style
> 
> Are we sure that no one is going to do a manual binNMU and not know the
> new versioning system?  We still do get occasional manual binNMUs.
> 

I was going to use the tags/binary-nmu-uses-old-version-style.dat as
argument here, but it claims we still have (exactly) one package
emitting it...  Looks like we have a bug somewhere in reporting.  :)

So I guess, the question is whether or not all developers have been
"re-educated" in the ~5 years the tag has existed[1].  I am inclined to
believe so as Britney does not seem to handle the old-style binNMU
(anymore?).  But if we still have people using the old-style, I have a
feeling Adam will comment on this.  :)

[1] commit: b5bd05c808cc329a52ca7164665af57ec0b79a28

[2] def same_source in Britney.

http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=mirror/britney2.git;a=blob;f=britney.py;h=b2c55ef6e990c225b414f037e9843774732d3053;hb=319f5ef9eb864a818bf7680f596bfc0e1f180cdf#l968

>>  postinst-should-not-set-usr-doc-link
>>  package-uses-obsolete-file
>>  old-style-example-dir
>>  old-style-copyright-file [AR]
>>  obsolete-field
>>  ancient-dpkg-predepends-check
>>  ancient-dpkg-long-filenames-check
>>  doc-base-file-references-usr-doc
> 
> I don't see any point in retaining any of these.
> 
>> Furthermore, I am considering to drop the following tags:
>>  x11-games-should-be-in-usr-games
>>  manpage-for-non-x11-binary-in-wrong-directory
>>  manpage-for-x11-binary-in-wrong-directory
>>  package-installs-font-to-usr-x11r6
>>  package-installs-file-to-usr-x11r6-bin
>>  old-app-defaults-directory
> 
>> Any package triggering any of those tags would (as far as I can tell)
>> also trigger package-installs-file-to-usr-x11r6.
> 
> That also seems fine to me, since we're still issuing a more generic tag.
> 


~Niels