Contents
How to help with fixing debian/watch files
- Write a good debian/watch file and test it with uscan.
- Submit it to the package maintainer via the BTS or salsa
How to write a good debian/watch file
See "man uscan".
Check the common mistakes section of the debian/watch page.
How to test the debian/watch file
By example pqiv 0.12-1:
- The file named "watch" contains this:
version=3 https://github.com/phillipberndt/pqiv/tags .*/archive/(\d\S*)\.tar\.gz
- Strip epoch and debian revision from the version. So 1:3.39-1 would become 3.39. In this case 0.12-1 becomes 0.12.
- Then use uscan like this (see "man uscan"), and verify whether the status makes sense:
uscan --watchfile watch --package pqiv --upstream-version 0.12 --no-download --verbose
- Then use uscan like this (see "man uscan"), and verify whether the link to the upstream file works:
uscan --watchfile watch --package pqiv --upstream-version 0 --no-download --verbose
List of debian/watch files with temporary or permanent problems
The Ultimate Debian Database (UDD) has a script which outputs the upstream version status of all packages in Debian: https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/upstream-status.json.cgi
To filter to packages that have debian/watch files with temporary or permanent problems, you can use jq like so:
curl https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/upstream-status.json.cgi | jq '.[] | select(.status == "error")'