XPost: linux.debian.maint.dpkg
Hi!
On Sun, 2024-12-15 at 09:27:06 +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
Historically, if you omitted `Priority` and `Section` from your
package, `dpkg` would warn and use `-` or `unknown` as placeholder
when it absolutely needed a value for these fields in the `.dsc` and
the `.changes` file. The resulting `.deb` would omit the field.
We would like to change this behavior such that `dpkg` provides
defaults for these fields. That is, if the fields are omitted from `debian/control`, you get `Priority: optional` and `Section: unknown`
as default in all artifacts (`.dsc`, `.changes`, and in the `.deb`).
Given the type of change, which seems rather safe and unobtrusive, and
with no concerns raised…
# The affected tools
Here are the tools that we are aware of that is or might be affected.
* `dpkg` (such as `dpkg-source`, `dpkg-genchanges`, and
`dpkg-gencontrol`) will need to be updated to implement
the change.
…I'm going to merge the changes I had queued implementing this,
targeting dpkg 1.22.12, which should get uploaded today/tomorrow.
* Maintainer tools such as `lintian`, `debputy [lint|lsp server]`,
etc. should stop warning about missing `Priority` field for
unstable. Most other maintainer facing tools should not care at
all, since the `Priority` field is mostly for d-i.
With `Section` being de facto mandatory, nothing major changes here
for that field.
I think these are pending, I guess once dpkg is in unstable, then
these can be filed/implemented.
* `dak` and other archive processing may need tweaking as `-` will
disappear (we can assume all uploads will come from a `dpkg`
version that has these features). Concretely, any special casing
of `-` for `Priority` will be redundant, and any special case
for `-` should apply equally to `unknown` for `Section`.
Though, our understanding is that `dak` likely only uses the cases
where `dpkg` used `unknown` consistently (such the `Package-List`
in the `.dsc`). Accordingly, we suspect it might not need any
changes other than a review to be sure.
As mentioned in the thread, an MR was sent by Niels and has already
been merged.
Thanks,
Guillem
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