Bug#555978: debian-policy: Forbid duplicate fields in control files
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: wishlist
Currently, so far as I can see, nothing in the general discussion of the
syntax of control files prohibits repetition of the same field name in
one paragraph. For example:
Package: foo
Package: bar
However, I believe this should always be a syntax error. Lintian has a
check for this:
Tag: debian-control-with-duplicate-fields
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: One of the paragraphs of your debian/control contains the same
field more than once. This can lead to unexpected behaviour in
<tt>dpkg</tt> and <tt>apt</tt>.
(I haven't checked the assertion about unexpected behavior) and this
check is among those that ftpmaster uses to reject packages. I think
we should prohibit such duplicate fields in Policy as well.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.9.5 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
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