+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 19th February 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
+details. And one of the details is the content of the
+debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
+the code in the package in question, preferably in
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
+readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
+
+<p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
+and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
+package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
+the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
+both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
+out what was wrong with
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
+zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
+figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
+semi-automatically.</p>
+
+<p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
+file based on the code in the source package,
+<tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
+and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>. I'm
+not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
+create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
+be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
+polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
+option in
+<a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
+blog posts from 2014</a>.
+
+<p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
+
+<p><pre>
+debmake -cc > debian/copyright
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
+this might not be the best option.</p>
+
+<p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
+this approach in
+<a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
+blog post from 2015</a>. To generate using cme, use the 'update
+dpkg-copyright' option:
+
+<p><pre>
+cme update dpkg-copyright
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
+handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
+
+<p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
+check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
+<tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>. The former seem
+to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
+ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
+copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
+names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
+fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
+if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
+copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
+
+<p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning. It
+will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
+It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
+can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
+
+<p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
+debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
+planet.debian.org.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
+on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
+
+<p><pre>
+licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
+ /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
+version control system to make it easier to discover license and
+copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
+with my packages in the future.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
+against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
+command line.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
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