This page describes how to run [[http://lintian.debian.org/|lintian]] against
the Ubuntu package archive. Lintian is a '''static''' checker of packages
against the [[http://www.us.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/|Debian Policy Manual]]
and for common mistakes. It checks for things like correct ownership and
permissions on files, and that the package has a copyright file, and so on.

It is very useful to run lintian on packages before they are uploaded, but
it is also very useful to run in centrally on all packages: sometimes lintian
is updated after the package is updated and finds new problems.

= Setup =

The lintian source tree has a wrapper program that takes care of
running lintian on all new packages. It requires filesystem access
to a mirror, so you need to arrange that somehow.

== Local mirror ==

'''debmirror''' is one tool for maintaining a local mirror. Here is
one way of running it (put this into a shell script):

{{{
debmirror \
        --ignore-small-errors \
        --ignore-release-gpg \
        --host=fi.archive.ubuntu.com \
        --root=/ubuntu \
        --method=http \
        --passive \
        --dist=\
dapper,dapper-updates,edgy,feisty,gutsy,gutsy-proposed,gutsy-security,gutsy-upda
tes,\
gutsy-backports,hardy,hardy-security,hardy-updates \
        --section=\
main,main/debian-installer,\
restricted,restricted/debian-installer,\
universe,universe/debian-installer,\
multiverse,multiverse/debian-installer \
        --arch=i386,amd64 \
        --postcleanup \
        "/xxxx/mirrors/ubuntu"}}}

You may want to optimise away some architectures or releases. Note that
it takes tends of gigabytes of bandwidth and disk space to have a mirror,
so don't run the above command lightly.


== Get the sources ==

{{{apt-get source lintian}}}

You probably want to do this on the current development version of Ubuntu,
to have a reasonably new version of lintian.


== Lintian harness ==

Unfortunately, the lintian harness is written for Debian, not Ubuntu, which leads to two problems:
a) its output is heavily branded for Debian and b) it needs to be run separately on
main, universe, multiverse, and restricted. In Debian, "main" includes almost all packages, so
Debian does not really care about running lintian on the other sections. For Ubuntu, you
need to set up lintian for each section separately.

Setting up the harness is fairly simple. 

 1. '''mkdir hardy-main'''
 1. '''cp lintian-1.23.46/reporting/config hardy-main'''
 1. '''cd hardy-main'''

Then edit the config file to change the following variables:

{{{
$HOME = "/home/liw/lintian/hardy-main";
$LINTIAN_ARCHIVEDIR = "/xxxx/mirrors/ubuntu";
$LINTIAN_DIST = "hardy";
$LINTIAN_ROOT = "/home/liw/lintian/lintian-1.23.46";}}}

Leave all other lines untouched. Then run lintian:

{{{../lintian-1.23.46/reporting/harness}}}

This will run for a long time, even on a fast machine. The results should
be some HTML files in '''www/reports''' in the '''hardy-main''' directory.
You need to copy (preferably with rsync) to a publically available
location, but please try to fix the Debian branding so as not to confuse
people about whose packages are being tested.

Then repeat this for every release and section you are interested in.


= More info/help =

LarsWirzenius used to run lintian against the Ubuntu archive. He's glad to help if you have questions.