Bug#801482: The name of a programme, from which an error message comes, is missing in the lintian's message
Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.30+deb8u4
Severity: important
Dear Maintainer,
* What led up to the situation?
Seeking an error that came when executing "lintian"
* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?
The folowing simple script shows the error:
#!/bin/bash
set -u
echo TMPDIR is $TMPDIR
/usr/bin/man $*
# end of script.
Put the script, named "man", in a directory that is searched before "/usr/bin".
Command line (any "deb"-file can be used (that contains a man-page?)):
lintian -C manpages /var/cache/apt/archives/lintian_2.5.30+deb8u4_all.deb
* What was the outcome of this action?
W: lintian: manpage-has-errors-from-man usr/share/man/man1/lintian-info.1.gz line 5: TMPDIR: unbound variable
W: lintian: manpage-has-errors-from-man usr/share/man/man1/lintian.1.gz line 5: TMPDIR: unbound variable
* What outcome did you expect instead?
The name of the programme where the error occurred.
This is important to reduce the time figuring out from where it came.
The value of the environmental variable TMPDIR is '/tmp'
###
There are two errors in "lintian", reported separately.
Here, the missing name of the file with "line 5" (which is the above script).
##
How will (the cause of) this programming error be documented, so people
(can) learn from it and do not repeat it themselves?
##
There is a saying,
Any fool can learn from his own experience,
The wise man learns from the experience of others.
Too many students show that the first line is not correct.
But the second is very important, and is the basis of
the setting up of an educational program.
Herman Rubin in the Usenet group "misc.education".
##
"The problems of the real world are primarily those you are
left with when you refuse to apply their effective solutions."
P. xxxviii in:
On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computing Science
Edsger W. Dykstra (Dijkstra)
SIGCSE Bulletin 1989, 21(1), bls. xxv-xxxix.
Also "www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/"
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.2
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'proposed-updates')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.16.7-ckt11-u3 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=is_IS.iso88591, LC_CTYPE=is_IS.iso88591 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii binutils 2.25-5
ii bzip2 1.0.6-7+b3
ii diffstat 1.58-1
ii file 1:5.22+15-2
ii gettext 0.19.3-2
ii hardening-includes 2.6
ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.1
ii libapt-pkg-perl 0.1.29+b2
ii libarchive-zip-perl 1.39-1
ii libclass-accessor-perl 0.34-1
ii libclone-perl 0.37-1+b1
ii libdpkg-perl 1.17.25
ii libemail-valid-perl 1.195-1
ii libfile-basedir-perl 0.03-1
ii libipc-run-perl 0.92-1
ii liblist-moreutils-perl 0.33-2+b1
ii libparse-debianchangelog-perl 1.2.0-1.1
ii libtext-levenshtein-perl 0.11-1
ii libtimedate-perl 2.3000-2
ii liburi-perl 1.64-1
ii man-db 2.7.0.2-5
ii patchutils 0.3.3-1
ii perl [libdigest-sha-perl] 5.20.2-3+deb8u1
ii t1utils 1.38-4
Versions of packages lintian recommends:
pn libperlio-gzip-perl <none>
ii perl 5.20.2-3+deb8u1
ii perl-modules [libautodie-perl] 5.20.2-3+deb8u1
Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn binutils-multiarch <none>
ii dpkg-dev 1.17.25
ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.71-1+b3
ii libtext-template-perl 1.46-1
pn libyaml-perl <none>
ii xz-utils 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2+b3
-- no debconf information
--
Bjarni I. Gislason
Reply to: