[Build-common-hackers] Bug#625448: Bug#625448: cdbs: Do not remove copyright_newhints if it contains new information

[Olivier Aubert]

On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 17:02 +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 11-05-03 at 02:35pm, Olivier Aubert wrote:
> > When new copyright information is detected by licensecheck, the 
> > displayed procedure advises to compare/replace copyright_hints with 
> > copyright_newhints. However, if COPYRIGHT_CHECK_STRICT is not set, the 
> > copyright_newhints is removed in all cases, which makes the file 
> > unavailable for further processing.
> 
> > The proposed patch removes the copyright_newhints only if there is no 
> > further processing to do.
> 
> CDBS previously behaved like your patch proposes, but was changed as the 
> "clean" target must properly clean - i.e. not leave behind any noise.
Then why not simply 
rm debian/copyright_newhints
in the clean target?

> So i doubt the patch is really sensible.  Or that this really is a 
> problem, other than one of improving documentation.
The problem is that for the moment, the message is misleading: a message
indicating "Fully compare debian/copyright_hints with
debian/copyright_newhints and replace debian/copyright_hints with
debian/copyright_newhints"  is displayed, and the copyright_newhints
file does not exist. I first had to search for it in other directories,
run the licensecheck from sources (hence #625442) to make sure it
worked, and finally had to look at the utils.mk source to figure out
that the indicated file was indeed removed just after the message is
displayed.

> How about simply extend the emitted instructions with setting 
> COPYRIGHT_CHECK_STRICT=1 and rerunning the pre-build rule?