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

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 -patch

On 2015-03-25 00:12, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:
> 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".
> 
> [...]
> 
> 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:
> 
> [...]

Hi,

Unfortunately, the proposed change (anchoring the exclusion pattern)
could break any number of packages, where the maintainer only used a
substring as parameter for --exclude.  Also, --exclude is used in a
number of different tools that would need a similar change (with the
same possible breakage).

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

A new argument is a much safer choice from my PoV.

~Niels