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
-machine
-readable DEP5 format.
-
-
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
-the
-zfsonlinux copyright file, I decided to spend some time on
-figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
-semi-automatically.
-
-
Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
-file based on the code in the source package,
-debmake
-and cme. 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
-blog posts from 2014.
-
-
To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
-
-
-debmake -cc > debian/copyright
-
-
-
Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
-this might not be the best option.
-
-
The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
-this approach in
-a
-blog post from 2015. To generate using cme, use the 'update
-dpkg-copyright' option:
-
-
-cme update dpkg-copyright
-
-
-
This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
-handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.
-
-
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,
-debmake -k and license-reconcile. 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.
-
-
The devscripts tool licensecheck 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.
-
-
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.
-
-
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
-
-
Update 2016-02-20: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
-on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
-
-
-licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
- /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
-
-
-
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.
-
-
Update 2016-02-21: The cme author recommended
-against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
-command line.
-
