Re: [gentoo-dev] gentoo-x86 tree cleanup for 'DESCRIPTION ends with a '.' character' warnings

[Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org>]

On 13 August 2014 02:46, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Dnia 2014-08-11, o godz. 20:48:20
> William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> napisał(a):
>> > got a minor (but chatty) QA warning:
>> >     DESCRIPTION ends with a '.' character
>>
>> Why is this a QA warning in the first place?
>
> Because it is a common mistake, and having the warning in-place should
> help people avoid repeating it.

This is correct.

>> I don't recall a policy mandating that descriptions can't end with '.'. I
>> asked our QA lead about it and was told that he didn't recall that we
>> have an official policy about it either. Also, the devmanual never
>> mentions any such requirement.
>
> I don't know if and where it is documented but that's what I was taught
> when I started contributing to Gentoo, and it pretty much follows
> the common sense. DESCRIPTION is supposed to be short and descriptive.
> So you do an elliptical sentence (if I got the right translation),
> and that doesn't end with a dot.

Again, this is what I was taught as well. It may have been an
undocumented rule, but it has been around for as long as I can
remember. It also makes linguistic sense, and as an English teacher it
always irks me when I see this mistake.

> If you have any fair reason to not follow this, please speak of it.
> Otherwise, this is pure bikeshed and waste of time. This thread already
> took much more time than fixing your packages if repoman complained
> about them.

Amen!

>> If someone can point me to something I'm missing, let me know.
>> Otherwise, I think the warning should be removed.
>
> Even if there were no written-down policy, why would it be removed?
> What is the benefit of removing the check that resulted in many fixes
> already? Do you want to revert the removals afterwards? Or do you want
> to introduce new packages which use '.' there?

I completely support this argument. The warning is correct and should
remain in place.

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer