Dear Maintainer,

From "/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt.gz":

  Don't file bugs upstream

   If you file a bug in Debian, don't send a copy to the upstream software
   maintainers yourself, as it is possible that the bug exists only in
   Debian. If necessary, the maintainer of the package will forward the
   bug upstream.

-.-

  I do not send reports upstream if I have to get an account there.
The Debian maintainers have one already.

  If I get a negative (or no) response from upstream, I send henceforth
bugs to Debian.

-.-

   * What led up to the situation?

     Checking for defects with a new version

test-[g|n]roff -mandoc -t -K utf8 -rF0 -rHY=0 -rCHECKSTYLE=0 -ww -z < "man page"

  [Use

grep -n -e ' $' -e '\\~$' -e ' \\f.$' -e ' \\"' <file>

  to find (most) trailing spaces.]

  ["test-groff" is a script in the repository for "groff"; is not shipped]
(local copy and "troff" slightly changed by me).

  [The fate of "test-nroff" was decided in groff bug #55941.]

   * What was the outcome of this action?

Output from "test-groff  -mandoc -t -K utf8 -rF0 -rHY=0 -rCHECKSTYLE=0 -ww -z ":

troff:<stdin>:95: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:354: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:382: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:449: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:461: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:537: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:617: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:701: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:884: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:938: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1399: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1464: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1495: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1800: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1895: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1939: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:1960: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2070: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2292: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2313: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2329: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2348: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2410: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2466: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2794: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2801: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:2840: warning: trailing space in the line
troff:<stdin>:3055: warning: trailing space in the line


   * What outcome did you expect instead?

     No output (no warnings).

-.-

  General remarks and further material, if a diff-file exist, are in the
attachments.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:02:00 +0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:

[potential problems in exiftool.1p]

I think you've been told this before, but I cam't be bothered to
search for prior examples, so I'm explaining this again, and for the
last time:

You are reporting a bug against exiftool.1p. This file doesn't exist
in the source package, or the upstream source. The manpage is created
from some POD documentation in a .pm file or .pod file at build time.
This means: There is NOTHING, I repeat: NOTHING, that the Debian
maintainers or the upstream maintainers of this package/distribution
can do about these kind of problems.

If there is a problem in the created manpage, that needs to be
addressed in the relevant tools, which are pod2man/Pod::Man in the
case of Perl documentation in POD format.

Please stop reporting these unactionable bugs against random Perl
packages in Debian. Also please close the plethora of bugs you have
opended or merge and reassign them to one suitable package.

If you keep raising these kind of unactionable bug, I'll ask
owner@bugs.debian.org for blocking your access to the BTS.


Cheers,
gregor

gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> writes:

For the record, as Pod::Man maintainer I'm not really interested in these
bug reports either. Bjarni has found some actual bugs in the *roff
generation in the past, but most of their bug reports are about things
like trailing whitespace that seem like a waste of everyone's time to me.
The occasional real bug report is useful, but the signal to noise ratio is
bad enough that I'd want to see some more dedication to understanding what
sorts of problems matter.

In this case, the POD source for exiftool has trailing whitespace on many
lines. It looks like those are the lines that end at the end of a
sentence, which means I suspect this is an artifact of the maintainer's
editor and may be intentional to assist with word wrapping. In any case, I
have no idea why this is a problem. Pod::Man copies the whitespace
verbatim to the *roff output, at which point *roff ignores it. If this
causes some sort of problem, I'm afraid the nature of that problem escapes
me.

Thanks Russ for adding your perspective!


Cheers,
gregor

For what it's worth, I'll go ahead and remove the spaces after the end-of-line periods in the ExifTool pods.

	- Phil

Phil Harvey <philharvey66@gmail.com> writes:

You certainly can if you want, but please don't worry on our account! I
really don't think they're hurting anything.