In R, unlike Debian, hyphens (-) and dots (.) are sorted equally for comparing version numbers, and it is standard practice upstream for hyphens to be used between the minor and patch numbers, e.g., x.y-z. The existence of the pedantic Lintian warning hyphen-in-upstream-part-of-debian-changelog-version could imply that these hyphens should be changed to dots, e.g., by using a uversionmangle option in d/watch. However, doing this can cause dependency issues in R packages. See, for example, [1,2,3]. Would it be possible to avoid emitting this warning for R packages? Note that most R source packages can be identified easily because they generally start with "r-". [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-r/2018/06/msg00069.html [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-r/2021/09/msg00135.html [3] https://bugs.debian.org/953225
Hi Douglas, Yes! We have a new facility for the purpose of granting summary exemptions to package groups. It is called a screen. [1] As for your broader issue, I would actually prefer if version strings were totally unrestricted, but am in the minority. [2] I will revisit the details and then install a screen for you, unless we can get rid of the tag altogether. We do not like to group based on installable names or source names. Those are a last resort because they enshrine namespaces that do not exist otherwise. On average, they also do not work well for language families where names vary (although it may for R). Can you think of another way to identify R packages? The tag is issued for sources. [3] Maybe you can find some ideas in the existing checks. [4][5][6] Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Kind regards Felix Lechner [1] https://lintian.debian.org/screens [2] Sorry to quote myself, https://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2020/06/msg00015.html [3] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Check/Debian/Changelog.pm#L105-106 [4] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Check/Languages/R.pm [5] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Check/Languages/R/Architecture.pm [6] https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/blob/master/lib/Lintian/Check/Languages/R/SiteLibrary.pm
Great! Possibly having dh-r and/or r-base-dev in Build-Depends? I'm still relatively new to R packaging, though, so I'm Cc'ing the Debian R list for further input. Thanks! Doug