Bug#1125967: libconfig-model-dpkg-perl: cme can add "Priority: optional"

[Dominique Dumont]

On Wednesday, 21 January 2026 18:13:38 Central European Standard Time you 
wrote:
> >- a warning requires a user decision to accept or not the change (for
> >instance, one should apply blindly a Standard-Version upgrade) I may have
> >to change the wording of cme doc ...
> 
> For "modify" or for "fix"? 

For "modify"

> Or, put differently, what's the difference
> between them in your idea?

With "fix", cme decides what needs to be modified to fix warnings. For dpkg, this 
depends on the content of dpkg model.

With "modify", the modification is decided by user. This command is intended to 
be used with arguments to actually modify dpkg files. For instance:

  cme modify dpkg-control source Maintainer="Foo <foo at debian.org>"

The fact that some minor modification like reformat, migration of deprecated 
values (e.g. Priority extra changed to optional) is a side effect.

Another less known command is "cme migrate" which is equivalent to "cme modify 
-save" (barring a bug which will be fixed with cme 1.044)

> >> and
> >> I don't know what's the best way to achieve this. `cme fix` should of
> >> course drop "Priority: optional" as requested by Andreas; if `cme
> >> modify` without any arguments can be made to act no-changing that
> >> would be great, otherwise a `cme reformat` might be an idea? Or `cme
> >> run reformat`?
> >
> >I'll have to think about it.
> 
> No hurry, I understand this is complicated, and it's just a minor
> thing.

Another possibility is to change dpkg model so that:
- by default priority is unchanged (no default value, no upstream default 
value)
- when Standard-Version is >= 4.7.3 , a warning is emitted when Priority is 
set to optional with a fix to remove this value.

I don't like this option because it may be confusing for "cme edit dpkg" 
users: the GUI will not show any hint on Priority's default value and user 
will get a warning when Priority is set to "optional" even if it is a legal 
value. IMHO, a warning should not be issued for a harmless value.

> For my workflow / for dpt-fixup, I thought about:
> - replacing `cme modify dpkg-control -save` for formatting with
>    either `wrap-and-sort -ast` or
>    `debputy reformat --style black --no-linter-exit-code`
>    They both seem to have agreed on a common format, just I'm not
>    happy with parts of it:
>    + putting ${subst:Vars} at the bpttom of Depends
>    + putting some build dependencies (like debhelper) before all
>      others.
> - for the time being, bumping the S-V (with sed etc.) before the call
>    to `cme modify dpkg-control -save`, then the latter shouldn't add a
>    removed Priority:optional back.

Or you can do the same with :

cme modify dpkg-control source StandardsVersion=4.7.3

or 

cme run update-standards-version

HTH