Bug#1118623: deb-src-control: fix VCS-CVS and VCS-git header field specification

Package: dpkg-dev
Version: 1.22.21
Severity: minor
X-Debbugs-Cc: Thorsten Glaser <[email protected]>

The fields are currently, like all the other Vcs-* fields,
specified to take (only) an “url” parameter.


For VCS-git, this is not entirely correct, the spec should be:

"VCS-git:" wsp url [wsp "-b" wsp branchname]

This is well-established and has been disseminated right around
the time those VCS-* headers were introduced.


For VCS-CVS, we need two(!) items instead. CVS repository
coordinates are not defined, nor definable, by an URL, as
they are comprised of two independent URL-like entities,
the path to the repository and the module within that.

For example, to obtain the upstream sources for mksh, you can do:

cvs -Rqd [email protected]:/cvs co -PA src/bin/mksh

Here, the RCS ,v files are placed in /cvs/src/bin/mksh/ on
the server. However, we cannot just say, for example,

VCS-CVS: [email protected]:/cvs/src/bin/mksh  # wrong

… because the split between the CVS repository and the
module within the repository cannot be determined from
just that.

It also cannot be determined server-side, as each repository
is defined by having a CVSROOT/ subdirectory, but you can
nest them (and I’ve seen people do that, and I’ve done that
for my cvs2git pseudo-repos as well), and between…

cvs -Rqd [email protected]:/repo co subrepo/dir/file
# vs.
cvs -Rqd [email protected]:/repo/subrepo co dir/file

… you get different content (the RCS IDs will differ), so
the distinction must be observed.

With CVS rising in importance due to git going to require
a port of LLVM and Rust to be used, excluding most hobby
OSes, I would like this spec bug to be fixed so lintian
stops complaining. I have been naïvely (relying only on
the aforementioned announcement) using…

"VCS-CVS:" wsp repopath wsp modulepath

… for this purpose, but am willing to work together to find
a better spec if this doesn’t suit. (Spaces within directory
names are going to break lots, so I hope people stay off them.)

Herein, repopath is anything that fulfills *(cvs)Repository::
(i.e. works as argument to the cvs -d global option), and
modulepath is a relative filesystem construct.