Re: Bug#1131015: mention Files-Excluded/Included-* in copyright-format-1.0.xml

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:54:13 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.policy
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Christian Kastner <[email protected]> writes:

> On 2026-03-21 10:17, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> The document has this to say about Files:
>> 
>>  Patterns match pathnames that start at the root of the source
>>  tree. Thus, “Makefile.in” matches only the file at the root of the
>>  tree, but “*/Makefile.in” matches at any depth.
>> 
>> Thus if we want this to be consistent, I think the tools should behave
>> like that for Files-Excluded/Included* too.
>> 
>> Finally, I'm sure there are bugs in all sorts of tools and existing
>> debian/* files, but bugs should not block a specification for things.
>
> I believe the same. However, even though I consider this to be a bug, I
> might be misunderstanding something, and this might be working as intended.
>
> In the latter case, the Policy would either have to acknowledge this
> design decision, or "force" a change of mk-origtargz -- hence why I
> wanted to point out #1106232.

It would be great to have confirmation from mk-origtargz maintainers if
they consider #1106232 a proper bug or somehow can argue that it is
intended behaviour.

Given the above quote, and lacking any other clear specification for the
the 'Files-Excluded/Included' headers, I think the reasonable
expectation is that these headers ought to behave like the wildcards in
the 'Files' header.

Any mk-origtargz maintainers reading this?  Maybe they could be pointed
to this discussion.

/Simon

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