lintian will produce a `debian-watch-file-is-missing` I-level warning
when `debian/watch` is missing. Newer version of uscan do not need a
`debian/watch` file if `d/upstream/metadata` is present and contains all
the necessary fields (for example `Archive: GitHub` + `Repository:
https://github.com/group/project.git`).

Lintian should not produce a `debian-watch-file-is-missing` if
d/upstream/metadata is present and contains all needed fields.

Regards,

I know this works but I could not find it documented anywhere, and the uscan manpage also has no mention about it.
Can you link me up with docs, if any? Any ideas when this can make it to uscan manpage?

Also, I think we can potentially miss out on one thing here. There are upstreams that sign their tags which are validated
via d/watch (pgpmode=gittag) and upstreams that even give a .asc files with the tarballs. Adding a tag on lintian potentially
causes us to miss out on those checks if package maintainers were to migrate to using d/u/metadata.

What do you think?

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/devscripts/-/commit/0eb2557c

I filed https://bugs.debian.org/1118692 asking for more documentation
and guidance from the uscan developers.
files. Anything more complex will need (or, at least, needs at the
moment) a proper d/watch file.

The question for me is rather: by not warning about the lack of a
d/watch file, will Debian packager also not take the chance to support
additional features like different `pgpmode` settings?

Regards,

Hi Yadd,

Can you provide some documentation for this please?

Also, there is #1118077 open against lintian to avoid `debian-watch-file-is-missing` when d/u/metadata is present and uscan can use the same.

I have a merge request for this. Can you please review this?

<https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/merge_requests/781>



Best,
Nilesh

Hello,

Bug #1118077 in lintian reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/commit/d89c857c261e8c3ae458e45eb456e267dbc1bdb6
The only drawback is that this needs to be in sync with `uscan` i.e. take up changes in the templates
as per uscan code changes. Unfortunately there is no perl library at the moment to provide these implementations.

Even if it were the case, we need to have the APIs consumable in a way for lintian to validate it.

Another approach would be to run `uscan --no-download` on the repo, but this will need internet access and also spawn
a bunch of other checks which we should avoid.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/1118077

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
lintian, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1118077@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Louis-Philippe Véronneau <pollo@debian.org> (supplier of updated lintian package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:18:10 -0400
Source: lintian
Architecture: source
Version: 2.140.0
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Lintian Maintainers <lintian-maint@debian.org>
Changed-By: Louis-Philippe Véronneau <pollo@debian.org>
Closes: 1040138 1118077 1137319 1145935 1146226
Changes:
 lintian (2.140.0) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Louis-Philippe Véronneau ]
   * Remove old GCC profiler detection method for Wheezy and earlier
   * new tag 'clojure-package-but-not-dh-clojure'
   * Mark 'clojure-package-but-not-dh-clojure' as Experimental
   * Refresh data for new licenses in /usr/share/common-licenses
 .
   [ Nilesh Patra ]
   * Lintian::Check::Debian::Changelog - Use distroinfo instead of hard-coding
     distro names (Closes: #1040138)
   * Lintian::Check::Debian::Upstream::Metadata - drop old code for checking
     YAML version
   * Lintian::Check::Debian::Watch - do not emit `debian-watch-file-is-missing`
     if d/u/metadata is present and has all the required fields (Closes:
     #1118077)
   * Add several tests to validate against uscan using d/u/metadata with
     missing d/watch
   * tests(copyright-file-general): Use `Apache-2.gz` to trigger
     `copyright-refers-to-compressed-license`
   * Lintian::Check::Scripts - Also check for `errexit` while emitting
     `maintainer-script-ignores-errors` (Closes: #1145935)
   * tests(scripts-maintainer-general): Add a preinst to check against #1145935
   * tests(use-godebug): Fix with golang 1.27 (Closes: #1146226)
 .
   [ Bastian Germann ]
   * Replace MLDBM storage with per-member Storable files
 .
   [ Nicholas Guriev ]
   * Update t/recipes/README
   * Fix processing non-ASCII arguments (Closes: #1137319)
   * Fix error handling on non-ASCII paths
 .
   [ Lucas Nussbaum ]
   * new tag 'ai-agent-instructions-exist'
 .
   [ Sylvestre Ledru ]
   * Precompile regexes in languages/python/stdlib-deprecation
   * Batch readelf calls when indexing ELF objects
   * Cruft.pm: use index() for the license keyword pre-search
   * Cruft.pm: trim whitespace with builtin::trim
   * Depend on liblist-someutils-xs-perl
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