NAME¶
lintian - Static analysis tool for Debian packages
SYNOPSIS¶
lintian [
action] [
options] [
packages] ...
DESCRIPTION¶
Lintian dissects Debian packages and reports bugs and policy violations. It
contains automated checks for many aspects of Debian policy as well as some
checks for common errors.
It uses an archive directory, called
laboratory, in which it stores
information about the packages it examines. It can keep this information
between multiple invocations in order to avoid repeating expensive
data-collection operations.
There are three ways to specify binary, udeb or source packages for Lintian to
process: by file name (the .deb file for a binary package or the .dsc file for
a source package), by naming a
.changes file, or by using a lab query
(see "LAB QUERY" below).
If you specify a
.changes file, Lintian will process all packages listed
in that file. This is convenient when checking a new package before uploading
it.
If you specify packages to be checked or use one of the options
--all or
--packages-from-file, the packages requested will be processed.
Otherwise, if
debian/changelog exists, it is parsed to determine the
name of the .changes file to look for in the parent directory (when using the
actions
--check or
--unpack). See "CHECKING LAST
BUILD" for more information.
OPTIONS¶
Actions of the lintian command: (Only one action can be specified per
invocation)
- -c, --check
- Run all checks over the specified packages. This is the
default action.
- -C chk1,chk2,..., --check-part
chk1,chk2,...
- Run only the specified checks. You can either specify the
name of the check script or the abbreviation. For details, see the
"CHECKS" section below.
- -F, --ftp-master-rejects
- Run only the checks that issue tags that result in
automatic rejects from the Debian upload queue. The list of such tags is
refreshed with each Lintian release, so may be slightly out of date if it
has changed recently.
This is implemented via a profile and thus this option cannot be used
together with --profile.
- -r, --remove
- Removed the specified packages from the lintian lab. This
is only useful with static labs.
- -R, --remove-lab
- Remove the laboratory directory. This is only useful with
static labs.
- -S, --setup-lab
- Set up or update a static lintian laboratory.
- -T tag1,tag2,..., --tags tag1,tag2,...
- Run only the checks that issue the requested tags. The
tests for other tags within the check scripts will be run but the tags
will not be issued.
With this options all tags listed will be displayed regardless of the
display settings.
- --tags-from-file filename
- Same functionality as --tags, but read the list of
tags from a file. Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. All
other lines are taken to be tag names or comma-separated lists of tag
names to (potentially) issue.
With this options all tags listed will be displayed regardless of the
display settings.
- -u, --unpack
- Unpacks the package will all collections. See the
"COLLECTION" section below.
Note in this option will also run all collections. See the
"COLLECTION" section below.
- -X chk1,chk2,..., --dont-check-part
chk1,chk2,...
- Run all but the the specified checks. You can either
specify the name of the check script or the abbreviation. For details, see
the "CHECKS" section below.
General options:
- -h, --help
- Display usage information and exit.
- -q, --quiet
- Suppress all informational messages including override
comments (normally shown with --show-overrides).
This option is silently ignored if --debug is given. Otherwise, if
both --verbose and --quiet is used, the last of these two
options take effect.
This option overrides the verbose and the quiet variable in
the configuration file. In the configuration file, this option is enabled
by using quiet variable. The verbose and quiet
variables may not both appear in the config file.
- -v, --verbose
- Display verbose messages.
If --debug is used this option is always enabled. Otherwise, if both
--verbose and --quiet is used (and --debug is not
used), the last of these two options take effect.
This option overrides the quiet variable in the configuration file.
In the configuration file, this option is enabled by using verbose
variable. The verbose and quiet variables may not both
appear in the config file.
- -V, --version
- Display lintian version number and exit.
- --print-version
- Print unadorned version number and exit.
Behaviour options for
lintian.
- --color (never|always|auto|html)
- Whether to colorize tags in lintian output based on their
severity. The default is "never", which never uses color.
"always" will always use color, "auto" will use color
only if the output is going to a terminal, and "html" will use
HTML <span> tags with a color style attribute (instead of ANSI color
escape sequences).
This option overrides the color variable in the configuration
file.
- --default-display-level
- Reset the current display level to the default. This option
behaves exactly like passing -L ">=important"
-L "+>=normal/possible" -L
"+minor/certain" to lintian.
One use for this option is to override only the display settings in the
config file.
- --display-source X
- Only display tags from the source X (e.g. the Policy Manual
or the Developer Reference). This option can be used multiple times to add
additional sources. Example sources are "policy" or
"devref" being the Policy Manual and the Developer Reference
(respectively).
The entire list of sources can be found in
$LINTIAN_ROOT/data/output/manual-references
- -E, --display-experimental,
--no-display-experimental
- Control whether to display experimental ("X:")
tags. They are normally suppressed.
If a tag is marked experimental, this means that the code that generates
this message is not as well tested as the rest of Lintian, and might still
give surprising results. Feel free to ignore Experimental messages that do
not seem to make sense, though of course bug reports are always welcome
(particularly if they include fixes).
These options overrides the display-experimental variable in the
configuration file.
- --fail-on-warnings
- By default, lintian exits with 0 status if only
warnings were found. If this flag is given, exit with a status of 1 if
either warnings or errors are found.
This option overrides the fail-on-warnings variable in the
configuration file.
- -i, --info
- Print explanatory information about each problem discovered
in addition to the lintian error tags. To print a long tag description
without running lintian, see lintian-info(1).
This option overrides info variable in the configuration file.
- -I, --display-info
- Display informational ("I:") tags as well. They
are normally suppressed. (This is equivalent to -L
">=wishlist").
This option overrides the display-info variable in the configuration
file.
Note: display-level and display-info may not both appear in
the configuration file.
- -L [+|-|=][>=|>|<|<=][S|C|S/C],
--display-level [+|-|=][>=|>|<|<=][S|C|S/C]
- Fine-grained selection of tags to be displayed. It is
possible to add, remove or set the levels to display, specifying a
severity (S: serious, important, normal, minor, wishlist, pedantic), a
certainty (C: certain, possible, wild-guess), or both (S/C). The default
settings are equivalent to -L ">=important" -L
"+>=normal/possible" -L "+minor/certain").
This option overrides the display-level variable in the configuration
file. The value of the display-level in configuration file should
be space separated entries in the same format as passed via command-line.
Note: display-level may not be used with display-info or
pedantic in the configuration file.
- -o, --no-override
- Don't use the overrides file.
This option overrides the override variable in the configuration
file.
- --pedantic
- Display pedantic ("P:") tags as well. They are
normally suppressed. (This is equivalent to -L
"+=pedantic").
Pedantic tags are Lintian at its most pickiest and include checks for
particular Debian packaging styles and checks that many people disagree
with. Expect false positives and Lintian tags that you don't consider
useful if you use this option. Adding overrides for pedantic tags is
probably not worth the effort.
This option overrides the pedantic variable in the configuration
file.
Note: pedantic and display-info may not both appear in the
configuration file.
- --profile vendor[/prof]
- Use the profile from vendor (or the profile with that
name). If the profile name does not contain a slash, the default profile
for than vendor is chosen.
As an example, if you are on Ubuntu and want to use Lintian's Debian checks,
you can use:
--profile debian
Likewise, on a Debian machine you can use this to request the Ubuntu checks.
If the token {VENDOR} appears in the profile name, lintian
will substitute the token with a vendor name to find the profile.
lintian uses Dpkg::Vendor to determine the best vendor to use (the
closer to the current vendor, the better). This is mostly useful for
people implementing their own checks on top of Lintian.
If not specified, the default value is {VENDOR}/main.
Please Refer to the Lintian User Manual for the full documentation of
profiles.
- --show-overrides
- Output tags that have been overridden. The related override
comments will also be printed (unless --quiet is used). Please refer to
the Lintian User Manual for the documentation on how lintian relates
comments to a given override.
This option overrides the show-overrides variable in the
configuration file.
- --suppress-tags tag1,tag2,...
- Suppress the listed tags. They will not be reported if they
occur and will not affect the exit status of Lintian. This option can be
given multiple times and can be mixed with
--suppress-tags-from-file.
This option can be used together with --dont-check-part ("Not
those checks nor these tags") and --check-part ("Only
those checks, but not these tags (from those checks)") to further
reduce the selection of tags.
When used with --tags, this option is mostly ignored.
- --suppress-tags-from-file file
- Suppress all tags listed in the given file. Blank lines and
lines beginning with # are ignored. All other lines are taken to be tag
names or comma-separated lists of tag names to suppress. The suppressed
tags will not be reported if they occur and will not affect the exit
status of Lintian.
Tags parsed from the file will be handled as if they had been given to the
--suppress-tags option (e.g. ignored if --tags is
used).
Configuration options:
- --cfg configfile
- Read the configuration from configfile rather than the
default locations. This option overrides the LINTIAN_CFG
environment variable.
- --no-cfg
- Do not read any configuration file. This option overrides
the --cfg above.
- --ignore-lintian-env
- Ignore all environment variables starting with
LINTIAN_.
This option is mostly useful for applications running lintian for
checking packages and do not want the invoking user to affect the result
(by setting LINTIAN_PROFILE etc.).
Note it does not cause lintian to ignore the entire
environment like TMPDIR or DEB_VENDOR. The latter can affect
the default profile (or "{VENDOR}" token for --profile).
Should usually be combined with --no-user-dirs (or unsetting $HOME
and all XDG_ variables).
- --include-dir dir
- Use dir as an additional "LINTIAN_ROOT". The
directory is expected have a similar layout to the LINTIAN_ROOT (if it
exists), but does not need to be a full self-contained root.
lintian will check this directory for (additional) profiles, data
files, support libraries and checks. The latter two implies that Lintian
may attempt to load and execute code from this directory.
This option may appear more than once; each time adding an additional
directory. Directories are searched in the order they appear on the
command line.
The additional directories will be checked after the user directories
(though see --no-user-dirs) and before the core
LINTIAN_ROOT.
Note: This option should be the very first if given.
- -j [X], --jobs[=X]
- Set the limit for how many unpacking jobs Lintian will run
in parallel. If X is not given, Lintian will not limit the number of
unpacking jobs run that can run in parallel.
This option overrides the jobs variable in the configuration file.
By default Lintian will use nproc to determine a reasonable default
(or 2, if the nproc fails).
- --user-dirs, --no-user-dirs
- By default, lintian will check
$HOME and /etc for files supplied by the user
or the local sysadmin (e.g. config files and profiles). This default can
be disabled (and re-enabled) by using --no-user-dirs (and
--user-dirs, respectively).
These options will not affect the inclusion of LINTIAN_ROOT, which is
always included.
These option can appear multiple times, in which case the last of them to
appear determines the result.
Note that if the intention is only to disable the user's
$HOME, then unsetting $HOME and
XDG_*_HOME may suffice. Alternatively, /etc can be
"re-added" by using --include-dir (caveat:
/etc/lintianrc will be ignored by this).
If the intention is to avoid (unintentional) side-effects from the calling
user, then this option could be combined with --ignore-lintian-env.
If for some reason --no-user-dirs cannot be used, then consider
unsetting $HOME and all the
$XDG_* variables (not just the
$XDG_*_HOME ones).
Note: This option should be the very first if given.
Developer/Special usage options:
- --allow-root
- Override lintian's warning when it is run with superuser
privileges.
- --keep-lab
- By default, temporary labs will be removed after lintian is
finished. Specifying this options will leave the lab behind, which might
be useful for debugging purposes. You can find out where the temporary lab
is located by running lintian with the --verbose option.
For static (non-temporary) labs this option causes Lintian to skip the
automatic clean up of some collections.
- --lab labdir
- Use labdir as the permanent laboratory. This is where
Lintian keeps information about the packages it checks. This option
overrides the LINTIAN_LAB environment variable and the
configuration file entry of the same name.
- --perf-debug
- Enable performance related debug logging.
The data logged and the format used is subject to change with every release.
Note that some of the information may also be available (possibly in a
different format) with the --debug option.
- --perf-output OUTPUT
- Write performance related debug information to the
specified file or file descriptor. If OUTPUT starts with a '&' or '+',
Lintian will handle OUTPUT specially. Otherwise, Lintian will open the
file denoted by OUTPUT for writing (truncating if it exists, creating it
if it does not exist).
If the first character of OUTPUT is a & and the rest of argument is a
number N, then lintian attempts to write it to the file descriptor with
the number N. Said file descriptor must be open for writing. E.g
&2 makes Lintian write the performance logging to STDERR.
If the first character of OUTPUT is a +, Lintian will append to the file
rather than truncating it. In this case, the file name is OUTPUT with
initial "+" character removed. E.g. +my-file makes
Lintian append to my-file
If Lintian should write the output to a file starting with a literal '&'
or '+', then simply prefix it with "./" (e.g.
"+my-file" becomes "./+my-file").
If this option omitted, Lintian will default to using STDOUT.
- --root rootdir
- Deprecated in 2.5.18 and will be removed in a later
release.
This option used to control what directory was used as the
LINTIAN_ROOT. It's primary purpose was to use Lintian directly from
a source tree. However, since 2.5.18 Lintian has logic for automatically
configuring itself without any assistance making this option largely
obsolete. Note if passed, then the chosen root dir must match the actual
LINTIAN_ROOT used by Lintian.
This option implies --no-user-dirs for backwards compatbility with
previous versions of Lintian.
- -U info1,info2,..., --unpack-info
info1,info2,...
- Collect information info1, info2, etc. even if these are
not required by the checks. Collections requested by this option are also
not auto-removed (in this run).
This option is mostly useful for debugging or special purpose setups.
It is allowed to give this option more than once. The following two lines of
arguments are semantically equivalent:
-U info1 -U info2
-U info1,info2
Package selection options:
- -a, --all
- Check all packages in the laboratory.
Note: If --binary, --udeb or --source is specified,
then only packages of that type is considered.
- -b, --binary
- The lab-queries listed on the command line are by default
binary packages.
With --all this means check all binary packages in the lab.
- --packages-from-file X
- Process the packages listed in X. If the line starts with
"!query:", then the rest of that line is processed as a lab
query (see "LAB QUERY").
Otherwise the line is read as the path to a file to process (all whitespace
is included!).
If X is "-", Lintian will read the packages from STDIN.
- -s, --source
- The lab-queries listed on the command line are by default
source packages.
With --all this means check all source packages in the lab.
The following packages listed on the command line are source packages.
- --udeb
- The lab-queries listed on the command line are by default
udeb packages.
With --all this means check all udeb packages in the lab.
CHECKS¶
- apache2 (apache2)
- Checks various build mistakes in Apache2 reverse
dependencies
- automake (autom)
- Checks for erroneous, missing or deprecated automake
files
- binaries (bin)
- This script checks binaries and object files for bugs.
- changelog-file (chg)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to policy
with regards to changelog files.
Each binary package with a /usr/share/doc/<foo> directory must
have a Debian changelog file in changelog.Debian.gz unless the
Debian changelog and the upstream one is the same file; in this case, it
must be in changelog.gz.
If there is an upstream changelog file, it must be named
"changelog.gz".
Both changelog files should be compressed using "gzip -9". Even if
they start out small, they will become large with time.
- changes-file (chng)
- This script checks for various problems with .changes
files
- conffiles (cnf)
- This script checks if the conffiles control file of a
binary package is correct.
- control-file (dctl)
- This script checks debian/control files in source
packages
- control-files (ctl)
- Check for unknown control files in the binary package.
- copyright-file (cpy)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to policy
with regard to copyright files.
Each binary package must either have a
/usr/share/doc/<foo>/copyright file or must have a symlink
/usr/share/doc/<foo> -> <bar>, where <bar>
comes from the same source package and pkg foo declares a
"Depends" relation on bar.
- cruft (deb)
- This looks for cruft in Debian packaging or upstream
source
- dbus
- Checks for deprecated or harmful D-Bus configuration
- deb-format (dfmt)
- This script checks the format of the deb ar archive
itself.
- debconf (dc)
- This looks for common mistakes in packages using
debconf.
- debhelper (dh)
- This looks for common mistakes in debhelper source
packages.
- debian-readme (drm)
- This script checks the README.Debian file for
various problems.
- debian-source-dir (dsd)
- This script looks for mistakes in debian/source/*
files.
- description (des)
- Check if the Description control field of a binary package
conforms to the rules in the Policy Manual (section 3.4).
- duplicate-files (dupf)
- This script checks for duplicate files using checksums
- fields (fld)
- This script checks the syntax of the fields in package
control files, as described in the Policy Manual.
- filename-length (flen)
- This script checks for long package file names
- files (fil)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to policy
WRT to files and directories.
- group-checks (gchck)
- This script checks for some issues that may appear in
packages built from the same source. This includes intra-source circular
dependencies and intra-source priority checks.
- huge-usr-share (hus)
- This script checks whether an architecture-dependent
package has large amounts of data in /usr/share.
- infofiles (info)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to info
document policy.
- init.d (ini)
- Check if a binary package conforms to policy with respect
to scripts in /etc/init.d.
- java (java)
- This script checks if the packages comply with various
aspects of the debian Java policy.
- manpages (man)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to manual
page policy.
- md5sums (md5)
- This script checks if md5sum control files are valid, if
they are provided by a binary package.
- menu-format (mnf)
- This script validates the format of menu files.
- menus (men)
- Check if a binary package conforms to policy with respect
to menu and doc-base files.
- nmu (nmu)
- This script checks if a source package is consistent about
its NMU-ness.
- ocaml (ocaml)
- This looks for common mistakes in OCaml binary
packages.
- patch-systems (pat)
- This script checks for various possible problems when using
patch systems
- phppear (phppear)
- This script checks if the packages comply with various
aspects of the debian PHP policy.
- po-debconf (pd)
- This looks for common mistakes in packages using
po-debconf(7).
- rules (rul)
- Check targets and actions in debian/rules.
- scripts (scr)
- This script checks the #! lines of scripts in a
package.
- shared-libs (shl)
- This script checks if a binary package conforms to shared
library policy.
- source-copyright (scpy)
- This script checks if a source package conforms to policy
with regard to copyright files.
Each source package should have a debian/copyright file.
- standards-version (std)
- This script checks if a source package contains a valid
Standards-Version field.
- symlinks (sym)
- This script checks for broken symlinks.
- systemd
- Checks various systemd policy things
- testsuite
- This script checks the Testsuite field in package dsc
files, and debian/tests/control if any.
- version-substvars (v-s)
- This script checks for correct use of the various
*Version substvars, e.g. deprecated substvars, or usage that can
cause un-binNMUability
- watch-file (watch)
- Check debian/watch files in source packages.
COLLECTION¶
- ar-info
- This script runs the "ar t" command over all .a
files of package.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- bin-pkg-control
- This script extracts the contents of control.tar into the
control/ and creates control-index as well.
- changelog-file
- This script copies the changelog file and
NEWS.Debian file (if any) of a package into the lintian
directory.
- copyright-file
- This script copies the copyright file of a package
into the lintian directory.
- debfiles
- This script collects files shipped in the source of the
package.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- debian-readme
- This script copies the README.Debian file of a
package into the lintian directory.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- diffstat
- This script extracts the Debian diff of a source package,
and runs diffstat on it, leaving the result in the diffstat output
file
- doc-base-files
- This script copies the contents of
/usr/share/doc-base into the lintian doc-base/ directory.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- file-info
- This script runs the file(1) command over all files
of any kind of package.
- hardening-info
- This script runs hardening-check(1) over all ELF
binaries of a binary package.
- init.d
- This script copies the etc/init.d directory into the
lintian directory.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- java-info
- This script extracts information from manifests of JAR
files
- md5sums
- This script runs the md5sums(1) over all files in a
binary package.
- menu-files
- This script copies the contents of /usr/lib/menu
into the lintian menu/ directory.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- objdump-info
- This script runs objdump(1) over all binaries and
object files of a binary package.
- override-file
- This script copies the override file of a package
into the lintian directory.
- scripts
- This script scans a binary package for scripts that start
with #! and lists their filenames together with the interpreter named by
their first line.
The format is: scriptpath filename
Note that the filename might contain spaces, but the scriptpath will not,
because linux only looks at the first word when executing a script.
- src-orig-index
- This script create an index file of the contents of the
orig tarballs.
- strings
- This script runs the strings(1) command over all
files of a binary package.
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
- unpacked
- This script unpacks the package under the unpacked/
directory
This collection is auto-removed by default in static labs.
FILES¶
Lintian looks for its configuration file in the following locations:
- •
- The argument given to --cfg
- •
- $LINTIAN_CFG
- •
- $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lintian/lintianrc
- •
- $HOME/.lintianrc
Deprecated in Lintian/2.5.12 and newer (use the XDG based variant
above)
- •
- XGD_DIR/lintian/lintianrc
Where XGD_DIR is a directories listed in
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (or /etc/xdg if
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is unset).
- •
- /etc/lintianrc
Deprecated in Lintian/2.5.12 and newer (use the XDG based variant
above)
Lintian uses the following directories:
- /tmp
- If no lab location is specified via the LINTIAN_LAB
environment variable, configuration, or the --lab command-line
option, lintian defaults to creating a temporary lab directory in
/tmp. To change the directory used, set the TMPDIR environment
variable to a suitable directory. TMPDIR can be set in the configuration
file.
- /usr/share/lintian/checks
- Scripts that check aspects of a package.
- /usr/share/lintian/collection
- Scripts that collect information about a package and store
it for use by the check scripts.
- /usr/share/lintian/data
- Supporting data used by Lintian checks and for output
formatting.
- /usr/share/lintian/lib
- Utility scripts used by the other lintian scripts.
For binary packages, Lintian looks for overrides in a file named
usr/share/lintian/overrides/<package> inside the binary package,
where
<package> is the name of the binary package. For source
packages, Lintian looks for overrides in
debian/source/lintian-overrides and then in
debian/source.lintian-overrides if the first file is not found. The
first path is preferred. See the Lintian User's Manual for the syntax of
overrides.
CONFIGURATION FILE¶
The configuration file can be used to specify default values for some options.
The general format is:
option = value
All whitespace adjacent to the "=" sign as well as leading and
trailing whitespace is ignored. However whitespace within the value is
respected, as demonstrated by this example:
# Parsed as "opt1" with value "val1"
opt1 = val1
# Parsed as "opt2" with value "val2.1 val2.2 val2.3"
opt2 = val2.1 val2.2 val2.3
Unless otherwise specified, no option may appear more than once. Lintian will
ignore empty lines or lines starting with the
#-character.
Generally options will be the long form of the command-line option without the
leading dashes. There some exceptions (such as --profile), where Lintian uses
the same name as the environment variable.
Lintian only allows a subset of the options specified in the configuration file;
please refer to the individual options in "OPTIONS".
In the configuration file, all options listed must have a value, even if they do
not accept a value on command line (e.g. --pedantic). The values
"yes", "y", "1", or "true" will enable
such a option and "no", "n", "0" or
"false" will disable it. Prior to the 2.5.2 release, these values
were case sensitive.
For other options, they generally take the same values as they do on the command
line. Though some options allow a slightly different format (e.g.
--display-level). These exceptions are explained for the relevant options in
"OPTIONS".
Beyond command line options, it is also allowed to specify the environment
variable "TMPDIR" in the configuration file.
A sample configuration file could look like:
# Sample configuration file for lintian
#
# Set the default profile (--profile)
LINTIAN_PROFILE = debian
# Set the default TMPDIR for lintian to /var/tmp/lintian
# - useful if /tmp is tmpfs with "limited" size.
TMPDIR = /var/tmp/lintian/
# Show info (I:) tags by default (--display-info)
# NB: this cannot be used with display-level
display-info=yes
# Ignore all overrides (--no-override)
# NB: called "override" in the config file
# and has inverted value!
override = no
# Automatically determine if color should be used
color = auto
EXIT STATUS¶
- 0
- No policy violations or major errors detected. (There may
have been warnings, though.)
- 1
- Policy violations or major errors detected.
- 2
- Lintian run-time error. An error message is sent to
stderr.
LAB QUERY¶
A lab query can be used to refer to a (set of) package(s) in the Lintian
Laboratory. The general format of a query is:
[type:]package[/version[/arch]]
Where:
- type
- This is the type of the package and (if present) must be
one of "ALL", "GROUP", "binary",
"udeb", "source" or "changes". This is case
sensitive.
If omitted this defaults to "ALL" unless another default has been
specified (see --binary, --udeb or --source). The
pseudo type "ALL" acts as a wildcard for any real package type.
The special type "GROUP" can be used to match all packages related
to a given source package. For more info, please see "Group
query" below.
- package
- This is the name of the package. This is mandatory and must
match exactly.
- version
- This is the version of the package, if left out (or if it
is "_") then any version will do. Otherwise the version must
match exactly.
- arch
- This is the architecture of the package, if left out (or it
is "_") then any architecture will do. Otherwise the
architecture must match exactly.
Note: This is completely ignored when matching against source
packages or when type is "GROUP".
Note: For changes packages, this must match the contents of the architecture
field in the changes. This field may contain a space (e.g. "source
all") and therefore may also need proper shell escape.
Group query¶
A group query can be used to (re-)process all packages in a given group. The
package and
version part will be used to look up one or more
source packages. The binaries, udebs and changes files for each matching
source package will also be activated.
CHECKING LAST BUILD¶
When run in an unpacked package dir (with no package selection arguments),
Lintian will use
debian/changelog to determine the source and version
of the package. Lintian will then attempt to find a matching
.changes
file for this source and version combination.
Lintian will (in order) search the following directories:
- ..
- Used by dpkg-buildpackage(1).
- ../build-area
- Used by svn-buildpackage(1).
- /var/cache/pbuilder/result
- Used by pbuilder(1) and cowbuilder(1).
In each directory, Lintian will attempt to find a
.changes file using the
following values as architecture (in order):
- $DEB_BUILD_ARCH (or dpkg
--print-architecture)
- The environment variable DEB_BUILD_ARCH (if not set,
"dpkg --print-architecture" will be used instead)
- $DEB_HOST_ARCH
- The environment variable DEB_HOST_ARCH.
- dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
- If dpkg(1) appears to support multi-arch, then any
architecture listed by "dpkg --print-foreign-architectures" will
be used (in the order returned by dpkg).
- multi
- Pseudo architecture used by mergechanges(1).
- all
- Used when building architecture indep packages only (e.g
dpkg-buildpackage -A).
- source
- Used for "source only" builds (e.g.
dpkg-buildpackage -S).
If a
.changes file matches any combination above exists, Lintian will
process the first match as if you had passed it per command line. If no
.changes file can be found, Lintian will print a list of attempted
locations on STDERR and exit 0.
EXAMPLES¶
- $ lintian foo.changes
- Check the changes file itself and any (binary, udeb or
source) package listed in it.
- $ lintian foo.deb
- Check binary package foo given by foo.deb.
- $ lintian foo.dsc
- Check source package foo given by foo.dsc.
- $ lintian foo.dsc -L +minor/possible
- Check source package foo given by foo.dsc, including
minor/possible tags.
- $ lintian -i foo.changes
- Check the changes file and, if listed, the source and
binary package of the upload. The output will contain detailed information
about the reported tags.
- $ lintian -c --binary foo
- Check the binary package foo in the Lintian
laboratory.
- $ lintian -C cpy --source foo
- Run the copyright checks on source package foo. The package
foo must be in the Lintian laboratory.
- $ lintian -u foo -U unpacked
- Unpack all packages named foo in the Lintian
laboratory.
- $ lintian -r foo
- Remove all packages named foo from the Lintian
laboratory.
- $ lintian
- Assuming debian/changelog exists, look for a changes
file for the source in the parent dir. Otherwise, print usage information
and exit.
BUGS¶
Lintian does not have any locking mechanisms yet. (Running several Lintian
processes on the same laboratory simultaneously is likely to fail or corrupt
the laboratory.)
If you discover any other bugs in lintian, please contact the authors.
SEE ALSO¶
lintian-info(1), Lintian User Manual
(file:/usr/share/doc/lintian/lintian.html/index.html)
Packaging tools:
debhelper(7),
dh_make(8),
dpkg-buildpackage(1).
AUTHORS¶
Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>
Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>
Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>
Please use the email address <lintian-maint@debian.org> for Lintian
related comments.