blog/archive/2016/02/02.rss

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   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2016</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2016</description>
   6                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</title>
  11                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
  15 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  16 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  17 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/&quot;&gt;machine
  19 readable DEP5 format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
  22 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
  23 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
  24 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
  25 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
  26 out what was wrong with
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447&quot;&gt;the
  28 zfsonlinux copyright file&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to spend some time on
  29 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
  30 semi-automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
  31
  32 &lt;p&gt;Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
  33 file based on the code in the source package,
  34 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake&quot;&gt;debmake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
  35 and &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme&quot;&gt;cme&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.  I&#39;m
  36 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
  37 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
  38 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
  39 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
  40 option in
  41 &lt;a href=&quot;http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html&quot;&gt;a
  42 blog posts from 2014&lt;/a&gt;.
  43
  44 &lt;p&gt;To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
  45
  46 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  47 debmake -cc &gt; debian/copyright
  48 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  49
  50 &lt;p&gt;Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
  51 this might not be the best option.&lt;/p&gt;
  52
  53 &lt;p&gt;The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
  54 this approach in
  55 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/&quot;&gt;a
  56 blog post from 2015&lt;/a&gt;.  To generate using cme, use the &#39;update
  57 dpkg-copyright&#39; option:
  58
  59 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  60 cme update dpkg-copyright
  61 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
  64 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.&lt;/p&gt;
  65
  66 &lt;p&gt;When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
  67 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
  68 &lt;tt&gt;debmake -k&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;license-reconcile&lt;/tt&gt;.  The former seem
  69 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
  70 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
  71 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
  72 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
  73 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
  74 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
  75 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;
  76
  77 &lt;p&gt;The devscripts tool &lt;tt&gt;licensecheck&lt;/tt&gt; deserve mentioning.  It
  78 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
  79 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
  80 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.&lt;/p&gt;
  81
  82 &lt;p&gt;Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
  83 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
  84 planet.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
  85
  86 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  87 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  88 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2016-02-20&lt;/strong&gt;: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
  91 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
  92
  93 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  94 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
  95   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 &gt; debian/copyright.auto
  96 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  97
  98 &lt;p&gt;He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
  99 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 100 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 101 with my packages in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
 102
 103 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2016-02-21&lt;/strong&gt;: The cme author recommended
 104 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 105 command line.&lt;/p&gt;
 106 </description>
 107         </item>
 108
 109         <item>
 110                 <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
 111                 <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
 112                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
 113                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
 114                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;appstream system&lt;/a&gt;
 115 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 116 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 117 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 118 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 119 about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 120
 121 &lt;p&gt;Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 122 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 123 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 124 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 125 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 126 providing the example file, do like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 127
 128 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 129 % apt install appstream
 130 [...]
 131 % apt update
 132 [...]
 133 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 134   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
 135 firmware-qlogic
 136 %
 137 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 138
 139 &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;the
 140 appstream wiki&lt;/a&gt; page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 141 a way appstream can use.&lt;/p&gt;
 142
 143 &lt;p&gt;This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 144 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 145 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using &lt;tt&gt;file
 146 --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;, and next look up the package providing support for
 147 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 148 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 149
 150 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 151 % apt install appstream
 152 [...]
 153 % apt update
 154 [...]
 155 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 156   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
 157 bkchem
 158 phototonic
 159 inkscape
 160 shutter
 161 tetzle
 162 geeqie
 163 xia
 164 pinta
 165 gthumb
 166 karbon
 167 comix
 168 mirage
 169 viewnior
 170 postr
 171 ristretto
 172 kolourpaint4
 173 eog
 174 eom
 175 gimagereader
 176 midori
 177 %
 178 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 179
 180 &lt;p&gt;I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 181 packages providing appstream metadata.&lt;/p&gt;
 182 </description>
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