[Mageia-dev] Rpmlint configuration, false positives

[Michael Scherer]

 Hi,

 so as done before on another time and land, I have pushed a rpmlint 
 specific
 policy for Mageia, aptly named 'rpmlint-mageia-policy" ( maybe
 rpmlint-policy-mageia would be better, not sure ).

 For those that do not know, rpmlint is a tool to check a rpm against a 
 list
 of rules written in python, that is used on Fedora, Mandriva, opensuse
 and likely others too. The tool is used on upload to refuse some rpms 
 based
 on this rules, and should be used by people to check rpms, to make sure 
 that
 no obvious errors is still there. However, this is not a perfect tool,
 and it can still give false positives, so people should not use without
 understanding errors.

 But we can filter and configure it to be a little more perfect.
 
 In a rather autocratic fashion, as the maintainer of rpmlint ( both 
 packages
 and uptream ), as a packager representative, and as a apprentice 
 dictator
 ( since there is lots of open position in this sector since a few weeks 
 ),
 I propose that this become the canonical source for rpmlint 
 configuration.

 In practice, that mean that false positives will have to be added 
 there,
 that stuff that are noted as errors need to be set in that package, and
 any policy changes must be made there.

 So the question is "how do we deal with evolution ( ie, how do we 
 decide
 something is now a error, or no longer one".

 Traditionally, packagers didn't care at all, and so the configuration 
 bitrotted
 since a long time, and people didn't used it, and I just added false 
 positives
 when packagers notified it ( ie, almost never, except when I noticed 
 some of them ).
 I suspect that my lack of communication around that didn't help ( and 
 so
 people didn't knew they could ask for adding a false positive to the 
 list
 of error to ignore ).

 Yet, I think we can do better, so feel free to suggest any mad idea for 
 this.
-- 
 Michael Scherer