Wishlist items:
-* Make dh_* "use strict".
-* enhance dh_installmanpages so it associates binaries and man pages and
- installs the man pages into the correct areas to suit the binaries they
- document. I may need to make this only happen when a switch is given, to
- preserve backward compatibility. (#16933, #17061)
-* maybe make dh_installmanpages look at the .TH line of man pages whose
- filenames end in .man, to figure out what section they go it. This would
- require a switch to turn on, for backwards compatibility.
-* All debhelper programs should be checked that they output files with the
- correct permissions no matter what the umask is set to. Currently, only
- those programs that run after dh_fixperms have been so checked. (Checking
- the rest is low priority, since dh_fixperms fixes any incorrect permissions
- they might have; still it would be nice to check them too, just to make
- debhelper more flexible.) One easy fix is to add umask 022 to dh_lib,
- however, there may be unforeseen ramifications of such a change.
-* All programs should also make sure the files they install are owned by
- root.root. Situation is currently the same as with permissions above, plus
- dh_installchangelogs is fixed.
-* Need a way to make dh_strip not strip any static libs. Also, it'd be nice
- if there were options to dh_strip, dh_compress, etc, to allow inclusion of
- directories and exclusion of files based on filename globbing. (Request from
- Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de>)
+* All debhelper programs should only accept the options they are documented
+ to accept (rather than accepting all debhelper options). They should
+ be able to print breif usage summaries.
+
+ I think this calls for a restucturing. Make a Debhelper.pm class. Each
+ program subclasses the class. The class provides command line parsing,
+ useful functions, and so on. Skeleton of a debhelper command would then
+ be:
+
+ use base qw{Debhelper};
+
+ sub startup {
+ # Add initialization stuff here.
+ }
+
+ sub perpackage {
+ my $package=shift;
+
+ # Stuff to do for each package here.
+ }
+
+ sub fini {
+ # And final stuff here, if any.
+ }
+
+ This needs more thought.
+
* Support use of environment variables in data taken from user, ie, in
debian/dirs. The problem with doing this is that we really want to allow
any filenames in that input, even those that look like environment
multiple commands call. One way to do this would be to write dh_cache,
that generates the cache. The catch is that if the user runs that program,
they are stating that they don't do anything later to invalidate the cache,
- without calling ch_cache again. (#23792)
+ without calling dh_cache again. (#23792)
* Add a switch to dh_installdeb to allow it to do user defined
substitutions. OTOH, maybe it's better if people just sed
- postinst.in before debhelper gets it's hands on it... (#25235)
-* objdump -p can get the soname of a library, try using that in dh_shlibs
- instead of parsing filenames.
+ postinst.in before debhelper gets its hands on it... (#25235)
Deprecated:
* DH_COMPAT 1. Can be removed once all packages are seen to be using 2 or
higher. I won't hold my breath.
-* Also, grep the entire archive for all dh_* command lines, and check to
- see what other switches are not being used, and maybe remove some of
- them. I'd also like to depercate/remove debian/compress files, -X is
+* Also, grep the entire archive for all dh_* command lines (I do this now),
+ and check to see what other switches are not being used, and maybe remove
+ some of them. I'd also like to depercate/remove debian/compress files, -X is
a better idea.
-
+* dh_suidregister. Once nothing in the archive uses it.
+* dh_installmanpages. Only mildly deprecated right now. Once dh_installman
+ catches on, make it emit a warning, and then wait for it to go away.
+* dh_testversion. Remove as soon as nothing uses it.
+* dh_installxaw. xaw replacments are dying, nothing uses it validly (bugs
+ filed on the few packages that use it by accident). Remove as soon as
+ nothing uses it, or by april 2002.
+* dh_movefiles. I won't hold my breath.