Bug#815980: tracker.debian.org: All packages have uscan issues

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 26/02/16 at 19:10 -0500, James McCoy wrote:
> Control: reassign -1 devscripts 2.15.10
> Control: retitle -1 "uscan --dehs" shouldn't send all output to stderr
> Control: affects -1 qa.debian.org
> 
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 12:29:10PM +0000, James Cowgill wrote:
> > > jcowgill at quantz:~$ psql service=udd -x -c "SELECT * FROM upstream WHERE source='easytag'"
> > > -[ RECORD 1 ]-----------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > source                  | easytag
> > > version                 | 2.4.2-1
> > > distribution            | debian
> > > release                 | sid
> > > component               | main
> > > watch_file              | version=3
> > >                         | http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/easytag/(\d.)+/ \
> > >                         |         easytag-([\d.]+)\.tar\.xz
> > >                         | 
> > > signing_key_pgp         | 
> > > signing_key_asc         | 
> > > debian_uversion         | 2.4.2
> > > debian_mangled_uversion | 2.4.2
> > > upstream_version        | 2.4.2
> > > upstream_url            | http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/easytag/2.4/easytag-2.4.2.tar.xz
> > > errors                  | uscan output on stderr: uscan: Newest version of easytag on remote site is 2.4.2, local version is 2.4.2
> > >                         | uscan warn: No upstream tarball downloaded.  No further processing with mk_origtargz ...
> > >                         | 
> > >                         | 
> > > warnings                | No upstream tarball downloaded.  No further processing with mk_origtargz ...
> > >                         | 
> > > status                  | up to date
> > > last_check              | 2016-02-26 00:04:48.688531
> > 
> > My guess is that this was triggered in UDD when devscripts 2.16.1 got
> > uploaded to jessie-backports. In devscripts 2.15.10, the interface to
> > uscan changed with everything being printed to stderr (even if it's not
> > an error) if --dehs is used.
> 
> Then this is what needs to be fixed.  The behavior, especially for
> something that's intended to be used by automation, shouldn't have
> changed such that it broke the major user of such functionality.

The code that runs uscan in UDD is
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-qa/udd.git/tree/rimporters/upstream.rb
(starting around line 50).

As you can see, the code is already quite complicated:
uscan warnings are outputted in the <warnings> tag, but not all uscan
errors are: sometimes they are in an <errors> tag, sometimes they are
just displayed on stderr.

It would be better if all uscan errors were displayed in <errors>. Then
UDD could just ignore the stderr output.

- Lucas