[debhelper-devel] Bug#781131: dh_compress: please improve "--exclude" (-X) option

[Dmitry Smirnov]

Package: debhelper
Version: 9.20150101
Severity: minor
Tags: patch

I'm working on package where I install "*.cfg" files as examples.
Because those files are used as configuration templates I do not want to 
compress them so I added the following to "debian/rules":

    override_dh_compress:
            dh_compress --exclude=.cfg

Unfortunately this also prevents compression of "*.cfg.5" man pages and cause 
lintian error "manpage-not-compressed".

I was not able to find how to exclude "*.cfg" files from compression without 
affecting "*.cfg.5" files. The only thing I could probably do is to hard code 
file name and path as follows:

    dh_compress --exclude="examples/myconfigfile.cfg"

but that's ugly for more than one file. IMHO the problem is that "\Q...\E" 
constraints (see dh_compress line 137) do not allow me to use regex in the 
exclude pattern.
Another problem is that excluded substring is not anchored so unexpected 
matches occur if exclude string is present anywhere in the file name.

IMHO the minimum workaround would be to anchor exclusion pattern to the end of 
the file name as follows:

~~~~
--- dh_compress
+++ dh_compress
@@ -133,9 +133,9 @@
                my @new=();
                foreach (@files) {
                        my $ok=1;
                        foreach my $x (@{$dh{EXCLUDE}}) {
-                               if (/\Q$x\E/) {
+                               if (/\Q$x\E\Z/) {
                                        $ok='';
                                        last;
                                }
                        }
~~~~

More robust and flexible solution would be to add new "--rexclude" option to 
allow regex exclusion patterns.

-- 
Best wishes,
 Dmitry Smirnov
 GPG key : 4096R/53968D1B

---

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includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
        -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2010
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