Package: dpkg-dev Version: 1.19.0.5+b1 Severity: wishlist [ My gut feeling tells me I've reported this before - but I couldn't find it ]
Dear Maintainer, dpkg-gencontrol might emit two warnings that look quite similar but have a rather different meaning: | dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Depends field of package <package>: unknown substitution variable ${<var>} | dpkg-gencontrol: warning: package <package>: unused substitution variable ${<var>} Even after several years of encountering these (and fixing, of course), I still get confused. Especially if only one of the both messages appear, it's likely to get the meaning of "unknown" and "unused" the wrong way. So I'm asking to reword these, and - more important - to include a suggestion for the maintainer, like the following: | dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Variable ${<var>} was not listed in debian/control for package <package> but is used - consider adding it | dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Variable ${<var>} was listed in debian/control for package <package> but is not used - consider removing it Yes, these messages are longer than the current ones. But I think it's worth it. Christoph -- System Information: Debian Release: buster/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.14.56 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: unable to detect Versions of packages dpkg-dev depends on: ii binutils 2.31-1 ii bzip2 1.0.6-8.1 ii libdpkg-perl 1.19.0.5+b1 ii make 4.2.1-1.1 ii patch 2.7.6-2 ii perl 5.26.2-6 ii tar 1.30+dfsg-2 ii xz-utils 5.2.2-1.3 Versions of packages dpkg-dev recommends: ii build-essential 12.5 ii fakeroot 1.23-1 ii gcc [c-compiler] 4:7.3.0-3 ii gcc-7 [c-compiler] 7.3.0-26 ii gnupg 2.2.8-3 ii gpgv 2.2.8-3 pn libalgorithm-merge-perl <none> Versions of packages dpkg-dev suggests: ii debian-keyring 2018.06.24 -- no debconf information
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