The copyright should be machine-readable about cabal-debian

[nomeata]

This is probably the most important feature request, as copyright handling is most tedious.

I started working on this, but it does not play well --compare, you should have a look. Maybe the copyright-related Atoms need to be reconsidered and made more abstract, and maybe an existing machine-readable debian/copyright needs to be parsed? You’ll know better what to do here.

Thanks!

[ddssff]

Where does the data in that template show up? I don't recognize those fields.

[nomeata]

That is an example debian/copyright field, according to http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ – is that what you are asking?

[ddssff]

Yes, thanks.

[ddssff]

Free form copyright files are still legit, right?

[ddssff]

Closed by patch a5f512c. The type for the copyright field is now Maybe (Either CopyrightDescription Text). There is code to parse a CopyrightDescription, and to format a CopyrightDescription that is added to the atoms via the copyright lens. I will add an example to the test cases to show how to build a CopyrightDescription.

[ddssff]

There are actually some more changes coming to make this work properly.

[nomeata]

This is not working fully yet, is it? So to avoid confusion, I’ll reopen this.

[ddssff]

I just noticed that the copyright file for both the debian and cabal-debian package say "all rights reserved" - what is the appropriate license for these packages if Debian is going to use them? The license text looks MIT-ish I guess.

[ddssff]

Joachim, could you look at the License type in src/Debian/Policy.hs and consider how to implement conversions to and from the Cabal License type, how to pretty print for the License: field of debian/copyright, and how to parse that license field back into a Debian.Policy.License value? The package is "working", but I'm pretty sure its making a mess of the license fields in my packages.

[nomeata]

The current version lacks the stanza

Files: debian/*
Copyright: held by the contributors mentioned in debian/changelog
License: license-name

as described in the original post.

Also, empty lines in the license are not properly escaped (using a single .).

[nomeata]

Joachim, could you look at the License type in src/Debian/Policy.hs and consider how to implement conversions to and from the Cabal License type

I’m reluctant to invest into this when it is not quite clear to me why we need this both ways. When exactly would I want to convert data from debian/copyright to something understandable by Cabal?

Also, the data type in Debian.Debianize.Types.CopyrightDescription doesn’t quite cut it. Consider the example in the first post: The first line of the License field contains the license name (which could be made-up and only used to reference within the file, hence foo license), while the remaining lines are the actual license text. Your code currently puts it into a Comment field.

Again, I feel sorry for not submitting a patch, but I’m still don’t see through the design of the code...

[ddssff]

This should be closed by 9b08957.

[ddssff]

But I'd better verify...

[ddssff]

Ok, this is ready for testing.