[Bug 756373] [NEW] update-maintainer mangles debian/control at the slightest provocation

[Steve Langasek]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: ubuntu-dev-tools

Recent versions of update-maintainer seem to use some sort of parser for
debian/control instead of doing a simple substitution into the file.
This is a problem because the parser is buggy - in particular it seems
to fail on stanzas separated by a line containing spaces rather than a
blank line, which is allowed by policy (if discouraged).  This manifests
as entire binary packages disappearing from the file because they were
merged with the preceding section and normalized to only contain copy of
each field!

Whatever parser update-maintainer is using should be fixed to conform
with policy; it should also be fixed to abort when invalid input is
detected.  But I'm filing this against update-maintainer because I think
a validating parser for debian/control is fundamentally the wrong way to
handle this file.  update-maintainer should only ever care about two
lines, the X-Orig-Maintainer and the Maintainer, and touching anything
else (as this parser does) is wrong.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: ubuntu-dev-tools 0.120
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.41-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Apr 10 00:47:57 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-dev-tools
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-03-24 (16 days ago)

** Affects: ubuntu-dev-tools (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug natty

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/756373

Title:
  update-maintainer mangles debian/control at the slightest provocation