Hi! On Sun, 2024-12-15 at 09:27:06 +0100, Niels Thykier wrote: > Historically, if you omitted `Priority` and `Section` from your > package, `dpkg` would warn and use `-` or `unknown` as placeholder > when it absolutely needed a value for these fields in the `.dsc` and > the `.changes` file. The resulting `.deb` would omit the field. > > We would like to change this behavior such that `dpkg` provides > defaults for these fields. That is, if the fields are omitted from > `debian/control`, you get `Priority: optional` and `Section: unknown` > as default in all artifacts (`.dsc`, `.changes`, and in the `.deb`).
Given the type of change, which seems rather safe and unobtrusive, and with no concerns raised… > # The affected tools > > Here are the tools that we are aware of that is or might be affected. > > * `dpkg` (such as `dpkg-source`, `dpkg-genchanges`, and > `dpkg-gencontrol`) will need to be updated to implement > the change. …I'm going to merge the changes I had queued implementing this, targeting dpkg 1.22.12, which should get uploaded today/tomorrow. > * Maintainer tools such as `lintian`, `debputy [lint|lsp server]`, > etc. should stop warning about missing `Priority` field for > unstable. Most other maintainer facing tools should not care at > all, since the `Priority` field is mostly for d-i. > > With `Section` being de facto mandatory, nothing major changes here > for that field. I think these are pending, I guess once dpkg is in unstable, then these can be filed/implemented. > * `dak` and other archive processing may need tweaking as `-` will > disappear (we can assume all uploads will come from a `dpkg` > version that has these features). Concretely, any special casing > of `-` for `Priority` will be redundant, and any special case > for `-` should apply equally to `unknown` for `Section`. > > Though, our understanding is that `dak` likely only uses the cases > where `dpkg` used `unknown` consistently (such the `Package-List` > in the `.dsc`). Accordingly, we suspect it might not need any > changes other than a review to be sure. As mentioned in the thread, an MR was sent by Niels and has already been merged. Thanks, Guillem
