[pacman-dev] [PATCH] libmakepkg: lint all arrays for empty values

[Eli Schwartz]

On 10/27/20 8:25 PM, Morgan Adamiec wrote:
> On 28/10/2020 00:04, Allan McRae wrote:
> 
>> pkgnames/depends/etc where it may be an issue.  So I'm not sure this
>> check finds anything in the "break makepkg/pacman" category.
> 
> I disagree, it actually does break something, the srcinfio file
> 
> Consider the following pkgbuild:
> 
> pkgbase=foo
> pkgname=(a b)
> pkgver=1
> pkgrel=1
> arch=(any)
> 
> license=(1)
> 
> package_a() {
> 	license=()
> 
> }
> 
> package_b() {
> 	license=('')
> }
> 
> And the srcinfo file:
> 
> pkgbase = foo
> 	pkgver = 1
> 	pkgrel = 1
> 	arch = any
> 	license = 1
> 
> pkgname = a
> 	license =
> 
> pkgname = b
> 	license =
> 
> 
> Now package `a` overrides license to an empty array. The srcinfo
> expresses this by putting an empty license entry.
> 
> Now package b defines a license of `empty string`, yet it generates the
> same output. So it's impossible to tell what the original pkgbuild
> actually meant.

In both cases, it overrides the license=('1') into non-existence.

The question is if "There is no license" or "the license is a
zero-length string of emptiness" is semantically meaningful. Especially
given the author of the PKGBUILD probably intended to put the former.

Given it's a purely display-oriented field, you can absolutely stuff it
with whatever you want, and "a zero-length string of emptiness" is not
technically invalid even if it is stupid, whereas it's useful to catch
makedepends=('') before makepkg -s fails to find a satisfier, root and all.

> This example may seen a little contrived, but i assure you it's not.
> Because stuff like this is done in the wild [1] and as a maintainer of a
> srcinfo parser it's annoying that it creates this ambiguity.

It remains unclear to me, why the ambiguity matters.

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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