Bug#877984: libconfig-model-dpkg-perl: misinterpreting comments in debian/control

[Dominique Dumont]

On Sunday, 8 October 2017 11:50:06 CEST you wrote:
> while preparing a mass-commit removal of inactive pkg-perl
> members from Uploaders, I found an issue reformatting
> debian/control in libmoosex-types-iso8601-perl:

Ack. There's a bug in Dpkg parser. The comments before a Description are not 
handled correctly. As a result, the comments are misplaced and the short 
description is moved in the long description.

> On the other side, if I run cme remove-uploader script then one
> of the comments is moved to the end of the stanza while the other
> stays where it was, resulting in comments that make no sense
> because they should stick together.

That's a side effect of the same bug.

> I guess that dealing with comments in deb822 format is difficult
> if you reorder the fields, thus I'm wondering if there's a way
> to reformat debian/control without altering the ordering, just
> reformatting the values.

I've tried Augeas [1]. I've created a lens that a read write dpkg file without 
changing the order. But bridging Augeas with Config::Model [2] is an order of 
magnitude more complex [2]. One has to maintain 2 dpkg descriptions with: 

* different syntax (lens description looks like a functional language, 
Config::Model is a data structure)
* subtly different semantics: 2 types of list on Augeas side vs 1 on 
Config::Model side

Long story short, to preserve my sanity, I finally gave up trying to harness 
these 2 beasts together.

I've some ideas on how to improve re-ordering on cme side. Before that, I need 
to simplify Config::Model read/write classes (aka backends)

Thanks for the report

All the best

[1] http://augeas.net/docs/references/lenses/files/debctrl-aug.html
 https://github.com/hercules-team/augeas/wiki/Create-a-lens-from-bottom-to-top
[2] http://search.cpan.org/dist/Config-Model-Backend-Augeas/lib/Config/Model/
Backend/Augeas.pm

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