[debhelper-devel] Bug#798414: debhelper: empty support file should imply no-op

[Michael Banck]

Package: debhelper
Version: 9.20150101
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

I had the case of one upstream package shipping a useless ChangeLog file
(basically having "check Github" as content).  dh_installchangelogs
installs this file automatically, unless I manually intervene.  The only
way to do so seems to be to add additional targets to debian/rules.  

My original idea of just shipping an empty debian/<package>.changelog
file did not work, debhelper aborted with an error.

So I'm filing this wishlist bug for consideration of empty support files
to imply no-ops rather than errors.  I think that would be an elegant
design, but I am not sure whether this is in line with dh in general.


Michael

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages debhelper depends on:
ii  binutils      2.25-5
ii  dpkg          1.17.25
ii  dpkg-dev      1.17.25
ii  file          1:5.22+15-2
ii  libdpkg-perl  1.17.25
ii  man-db        2.7.0.2-5
ii  perl          5.20.2-3+deb8u1
ii  po-debconf    1.0.16+nmu3

debhelper recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debhelper suggests:
pn  dh-make  <none>

-- no debconf information