Bug#849622: lintian: unexpected description-starts-with-leading-spaces

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

Taylor Kline:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.5.49
> Severity: normal
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Although my debian/control file looks as such:
> 


Hi Taylor,

Thanks for the report.  Lintian is correct, but I appreciate your
confusion here.

The package "description" consists of two parts
 * The "synopsis" - which is the very first line
 * The (long/extended) "description" - which is the rest

Lintian often uses the terms "synopsis" and "description" (because we
have separate checks for them).  That said, we probably occasionally use
"description" for both "synopsis" /and/ the extended description.
Concretely:

> ...
> Suggests: nginx
> Description:front-end for the rTorrent torrent client
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is the synopsis, which clearly has no leading spaces (NB: a single
space is acceptable and useful for readability)

Below is the (extended) description.  The line has 3 spaces
  - 1 as required by the format
  - 2 which are a part of the description.  These are the ones causing
    the warning.

   vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
>    ruTorrent is a web front-end for rTorrent designed to emulate the
>    ...
> 
> [...]
> 
> Thanks for your attention,
> -Taylor
> 
> [...]

I hope this clarified the issue.

With that out of the way.  The description of the tag says:

"""
> N:   The package "Description:" starts with leading spaces. Usually,
> N:   leading spaces are used to switch "verbatim display" on (i.e., lines
> N:   are not wrapped) so this might be a bug in the package.
"""

I think this could be clarified to at least refer to the extended
description.

Thanks,
~Niels