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 * All debhelper programs should be checked that they output files with the
34 correct permissions no matter what the umask is set to. Currently, only
35 those programs that run after dh_fixperms have been so checked. (Checking
36 the rest is low priority, since dh_fixperms fixes any incorrect permissions
37 they might have; still it would be nice to check them too, just to make
38 debhelper more flexible.) One easy fix is to add umask 022 to dh_lib,
39 however, there may be unforeseen ramifications of such a change.
40 * All programs should also make sure the files they install are owned by
41 root.root. Situation is currently the same as with permissions above, plus
42 dh_installchangelogs is fixed.
43 * Support use of environment variables in data taken from user, ie, in
44 debian/dirs. The problem with doing this is that we really want to allow
45 any filenames in that input, even those that look like environment
46 variables. However, it may be worth adding a switch to make it parse
47 environment variables. (#20964)
48 * It's possible to speed up debhelper by having it cache some values that
49 multiple commands call. One way to do this would be to write dh_cache,
50 that generates the cache. The catch is that if the user runs that program,
51 they are stating that they don't do anything later to invalidate the cache,
52 without calling dh_cache again. (#23792)
53 * Add a switch to dh_installdeb to allow it to do user defined
54 substitutions. OTOH, maybe it's better if people just sed
55 postinst.in before debhelper gets it's hands on it... (#25235)
59 * DH_COMPAT 1. Can be removed once all packages are seen to be using 2 or
60 higher. I won't hold my breath.
61 * Also, grep the entire archive for all dh_* command lines, and check to
62 see what other switches are not being used, and maybe remove some of
63 them. I'd also like to depercate/remove debian/compress files, -X is
65 * dh_suidregister. Once nothing in the archive uses it.
66 * dh_installmanpages. Only mildly deprecated right now. Once dh_installman
67 catches on, make it emit a warning, and then wait for it to go away.
68 * dh_testversion. Only mildly deprecated right now. Make it emit a warning
69 by jan 2002, and remove as soon as nothing uses it.