1 This is the TODO for debhelper. As more and more people use debhelper, this
2 list grows - I welcome patches to fix items on it!
6 * All debhelper programs should only accept the options they are documented
7 to accept (rather than accepting all debhelper options). They should
8 be able to print breif usage summaries.
10 I think this calls for a restucturing. Make a Debhelper.pm class. Each
11 program subclasses the class. The class provides command line parsing,
12 useful functions, and so on. Skeleton of a debhelper command would then
15 use base qw{Debhelper};
18 # Add initialization stuff here.
24 # Stuff to do for each package here.
28 # And final stuff here, if any.
31 This needs more thought.
33 * Support use of environment variables in data taken from user, ie, in
34 debian/dirs. The problem with doing this is that we really want to allow
35 any filenames in that input, even those that look like environment
36 variables. However, it may be worth adding a switch to make it parse
37 environment variables. (#20964)
38 * It's possible to speed up debhelper by having it cache some values that
39 multiple commands call. One way to do this would be to write dh_cache,
40 that generates the cache. The catch is that if the user runs that program,
41 they are stating that they don't do anything later to invalidate the cache,
42 without calling dh_cache again. (#23792)
43 * Add a switch to dh_installdeb to allow it to do user defined
44 substitutions. OTOH, maybe it's better if people just sed
45 postinst.in before debhelper gets its hands on it... (#25235)
46 * install-info, as of dpkg 1.10, parses the info file for section if
47 --section is not given. So I should be able to stop parsing it myself for
48 section, after dpkg 1.10 has been around long enough.
52 * DH_COMPAT 1. Can be removed once all packages are seen to be using 2 or
53 higher. I won't hold my breath.
54 * Also, grep the entire archive for all dh_* command lines (I do this now),
55 and check to see what other switches are not being used, and maybe remove
56 some of them. I'd also like to depercate/remove debian/compress files, -X is
58 * dh_suidregister. Once nothing in the archive uses it.
59 * dh_installmanpages. Only mildly deprecated right now. Once dh_installman
60 catches on, make it emit a warning, and then wait for it to go away.
61 * dh_testversion. Remove as soon as nothing uses it.
62 * dh_installxaw. xaw replacments are dying, nothing uses it validly (bugs
63 filed on the few packages that use it by accident). Remove as soon as
64 nothing uses it, or by april 2002.
65 * dh_movefiles. I won't hold my breath.