Parsing single debian/control file

[John Wright]

Sorry, let's try again with the real mailing list address. :)

On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 05:08:40AM -0700, John Wright wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
> Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier.
> 
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 09:25:46PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > Hi John,
> > 
> > I wonder what might be the proper mailing list to ask questions
> > like this - feel free to quote me fully or in parts in public.
> 
> I have added the package discussion mailing list to Cc.
> 
> > I intend to parse some machine readable files in some team maintained
> > packages.  When trying something like
> > 
> >    ctrl = open('debian/control','r')
> >    for ctrlstanza in deb822.Packages.iter_paragraphs(ctrl):
> >        print ctrlstanza
> > 
> > I get the full text of debian/control (same if I try
> > deb822.Sources.iter_paragraphs instead) - so there is no chance to parse
> > the single paragraphs in the Sources and Binary packages section.  I
> > might be stupid because I'd regard this as a basic use case for
> > python-debian but I did not found a way to approach this.  Any hint how
> > to do this properly?
> 
> The code you have above is correct (though I would generally use
> deb822.Deb822.iter_paragraphs - Packages and Sources may have some
> special semantics).  The string representation of a Deb822 instance is
> designed to be just like its input - idential to it, if possible.  But
> it works like a dict, so you can do
> 
>   for stanza in deb822.Deb822.iter_paragraphs(ctrl):
>       if 'source' in stanza:
>           print 'Source:', stanza['source']
>       if 'package' in stanza:
>           print 'Package:', stanza['package']
> 
> The keys are case-insensitive.  You can also add new keys.  The string
> representation will place the new fields at the end, using whatever
> capitalization you initially used.	
> 
> This could probably use some examples and better documentation in
> general.
> 
> > Something related but not high priority for me and thus perhaps an issue
> > for a wishlist bug (have not checked BTS for it):  Since DEP5 is accepted
> > the parsing of debian/copyright might be an interesting feature as well.
> 
> I haven't seen a request for this yet.  Please do file a bug!
> 
> > Kind regards and thanks for your help
> > 
> >       Andreas.
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://fam-tille.de

-- 
John Wright <jsw at debian.org>