Bug#947168: duplicate-short-description doesn't deal well with Haskell packages

[Felix Lechner]

Hi s3v,

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 3:21 AM s3v <c0llapsed at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> duplicate-short-description tag has been emitted for a lot of Haskell packages
> but short descriptions seem to be different.

Lintian checks d/control in the source package. All of the entries look like:

Description: ${haskell:ShortDescription}${haskell:ShortBlurb}
 ${haskell:LongDescription}
 .
 ${haskell:Blurb}

> I admit I've not checked all Haskell packages but all short descriptions in
> control file are in the form
>
>  Description: ${haskell:ShortDescription}${haskell:ShortBlurb}
>
> maybe ${haskell:ShortBlurb} is not properly handled?

You are right. The variable is not handled at all. The current Lintian
check does not work for Haskell packages.

Checking the source packages, as we currently do, has the advantage
that no built packages need be present. Lintian can run separately on
*.dsc, *.deb and *.changes, and we prefer to run on source packages
whenever possible. That does not work when variables are used, and
should perhaps be changed for all of Lintian.

A hybrid option would be to check the installation packages second, if
present, and suppress any tags not actually warranted.

This is a great bug and will require some thinking.

Kind regards
Felix Lechner