lintian 2.5.6 / usr / share / lintian / checks / description.desc

Check-Script: description
Author: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@debian.org>
Abbrev: des
Type: binary, udeb
Info: Check if the Description control field of a binary package conforms
 to the rules in the Policy Manual (section 3.4).

Tag: package-has-no-description
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: The binary package does not have a "Description:" control field.
Tested: empty
Ref: policy 3.4

Tag: description-synopsis-is-empty
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: The first line in the "Description:" is empty.
Ref: policy 3.4

Tag: extended-description-contains-empty-paragraph
Severity: normal
Certainty: certain
Info: The extended description (the lines after the first line of the
 "Description:" field) contains an empty paragraph.

Tag: extended-description-is-empty
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: The extended description (the lines after the first line of the
 "Description:" field) is empty.
Ref: policy 3.4

Tag: extended-description-is-probably-too-short
Severity: minor
Certainty: possible
Ref: devref 6.2.1, devref 6.2.3
Info: The extended description (the lines after the first line of the
 "Description:" field) is only one or two lines long.  The extended
 description should provide a user with enough information to decide
 whether they want to install this package, what it contains, and how it
 compares to similar packages.  One or two lines is normally not enough to
 do this.

Tag: description-contains-invalid-control-statement
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: The description contains a line starting with a dot (.). This is
 not allowed.
Ref: policy 5.6.13

Tag: description-too-long
Severity: minor
Certainty: certain
Info: The first line of the "Description:" must not exceed 80 characters.
Ref: policy 3.4.1

Tag: description-starts-with-package-name
Severity: important
Certainty: certain
Info: The first line of the "Description:" should not start with the
 package name. For example, the package <tt>foo</tt> should not
 have a description like this: "foo is a program that...".
Ref: policy 3.4.1

Tag: description-synopsis-starts-with-article
Severity: minor
Certainty: certain
Info: The first line of the "Description:" should omit any initial indefinite
 or definite article: "a", "an", or "the". A good heuristic is that it should
 be possible to substitute the package <tt>name</tt> and <tt>synopsis</tt>
 into this formula:
 .
 The package <tt>name</tt> provides {a,an,the,some} <tt>synopsis</tt>.
Ref: devref 6.2.2

Tag: description-contains-tabs
Severity: important
Certainty: certain
Info: The package "Description:" must not contain tab characters.
Ref: policy 5.6.13

Tag: description-starts-with-leading-spaces
Severity: normal
Certainty: possible
Info: The package "Description:" starts with leading spaces. Usually,
 leading spaces are used to switch "verbatim display" on (i.e., lines
 are not wrapped) so this might be a bug in the package.

Tag: possible-unindented-list-in-extended-description
Severity: normal
Certainty: possible
Info: The package "Description:" contains an unindented line which
 starts with a dash (-) or asterisk (*). If this was meant to be a
 list of items these lines need to be indented (dselect would
 word-wrap these lines otherwise).
Ref: policy 5.6.13

Tag: description-is-debmake-template
Severity: important
Certainty: certain
Info: The synopsis or the extended description just says "Missing",
 which is a template provided by debmake.

Tag: description-is-dh_make-template
Severity: serious
Certainty: certain
Info: The synopsis or the extended description has not been changed
 from the template provided by dh_make.

Tag: description-contains-dh-make-perl-template
Severity: normal
Certainty: certain
Info: The extended description contains the statement that it was
 automagically extracted by dh-make-perl.  Please check the description
 for correctness and usefulness and remove the dh-make-perl statement
 to signal that you have done so. 

Tag: description-synopsis-might-not-be-phrased-properly
Severity: minor
Certainty: possible
Info: The synopsis (first line in the package "Description:" field, the
 short description) ends with a full stop "." character. This is not
 necessary, as the synopsis doesn't need to be a full sentence. It is
 recommended that a descriptive phrase is used instead.
 .
 Note also that the synopsis is not part of the rest of the "Description:"
 field.
Ref: devref 6.2.2

Tag: description-synopsis-is-duplicated
Severity: important
Certainty: certain
Info: The first line of the extended Description: should not repeat the
 synopsis exactly. This indicates that either the synopsis is badly formed
 or that the extended description has been wrongly copied and pasted.
Ref: policy 3.4.2

Tag: extended-description-line-too-long
Severity: normal
Certainty: certain
Info: One or more lines in the extended part of the "Description:" field
 have been found to contain more than 80 characters. For the benefit of
 users of 80x25 terminals, it is recommended that the lines do not exceed
 80 characters.
Ref: policy 3.4.1

Tag: description-contains-homepage
Severity: normal
Certainty: certain
Info: The extended description contains a "Homepage:" pseudo-header
 following the old Developer's Reference recommendation.  As of 1.14.6,
 dpkg now supports Homepage: as a regular field in
 <tt>debian/control</tt>.  This header should be moved from the extended
 description to the fields for the relevant source or binary packages.

Tag: spelling-error-in-description
Severity: minor
Certainty: certain
Info: Lintian found a spelling error in the package description.  Lintian
 has a list of common misspellings that it looks for.  It does not have a
 dictionary like a spelling checker does.  It is particularly picky about
 spelling and capitalization in package descriptions since they're very
 visible to end users.

Tag: capitalization-error-in-description
Severity: minor
Certainty: wild-guess
Info: Lintian found a possible capitalization error in the package
 description.  Lintian has a list of common capitalization errors,
 primarily of upstream projects, that it looks for.  It does not have a
 dictionary like a spelling checker does.
 .
 This is a particularly picky check of capitalization in package
 descriptions, since they're very visible to end users, but it will have
 false positives for project names used in a context where they should be
 lowercase, such as package names or executable names.

Tag: description-contains-duplicated-word
Severity: normal
Certainty: possible
Info: The description contains a duplicated word.  Usually this is a
 mistake, or at least an awkward phrasing.

Tag: using-first-person-in-description
Severity: minor
Certainty: possible
Info: You should avoid the use of first person ("I will do this..." or
 "We recommend...").  The computer is not a person and the description
 does not speak for the maintainer or maintainers.  Instead, use a more
 neutral construction and try to rephrase into factual statements about
 the package.
 .
 For example, rather than saying "I don't recommend this package if you
 are short on memory," say something like "this package is not suitable
 for low-memory systems."

Tag: description-possibly-contains-homepage
Severity: wishlist
Certainty: wild-guess
Info: This package has no Homepage field but has a URL in the description
 and wording that might indicate this is the package Homepage.  If it is,
 add a Homepage control field containing it rather than mentioning it in
 the package description.