Bug#849498: cme: Please allow "fixing" without restyling

[Dominique Dumont]

Hello

On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 20:39:28 +0200 Niels Thykier <niels at thykier.net> wrote:
> Chiming in on this rather old bug. Based on 
> https://bugs.debian.org/895570#46, we know that `wrap-and-sort -ast` is 
> the most popular styling. So in the absence of `cme` not being able to 
> preserve the original input style, using `-ast` is likely to be a better 
> default.

Agreed.

I understand the effect of the -ast option and can implement them. But I'm 
still fuzzy on the sort order of the control fields. 

Anyway, let's tackle first the -ast option. Fixing the field order can be done 
later.

> Secondly, I have introduced an `X-Style: black`[1] to `debian/control` 
> to enable `debputy` to tell when people have opted into to automatic 
> reformatting of `debian/*` files. The `black` style is maintained by 
> `debputy reformat`, so ideally `cme` would use `debputy reformat` for 
> formatting rather than using its own formatting. But, I appreciate that 
> would be difficult to retrofit, and if `cme` would default to 
> `wrap-and-sort -ast` parameters by default it would mostly align with 
> `X-Style: black`. There are still some minor delta due to field ordering 
> plus #1111291 and #1111292, but the big win would be `-ast` right now

Hmm, right. 

I'll check if debputy reformat can be run after writing the control file 
without adding a kludge in cme.

> Another alternative is to make `cme` not reformat at all and step out of 
> this entire discussion. Though, I suspect if this was easy for `cme` to 
> do then you would have already fixed this bug long ago.

Indeed. See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=849498#10

> Summing up, I hope I can convince you to migrate `cme` to use 
> `wrap-and-sort -ast` style formatting in the interim in the absence of a 
> full round-trip formatting-less safe parsing + write cycle.

I'm fine with this.

All the best