DFSG NEW review for scala-debian-helper version 0.1

Summary

• Licensing is DFSG-compliant and debian/copyright is accurate: Yes
• Packaging is of good quality: Yes
• Issues: 0 blocker, 0 important, 1 minor
• debian/watch: absent (native package)
• debian/copyright: machine-readable
• Scan before the review: nothing found

Licensing

debian/copyright is DEP-5 and covers the whole tree: Files: * gives GPL-3+, 2026 Juan Manuel Mendez Rey for the package's own code, a late stanza gives .perltidyrc its real holders (Russ Allbery, Leland Stanford Junior University) and FSFAP with the full permission text, and a stanza with a Comment covers the five files that embed third-party licence wording as test data. No file has a contradicting notice, there is no non-free term, and the only third-party file (.perltidyrc, from rra-c-util) is freely modifiable and its text is reproduced. The holders the prescan reported are fictional names in test fixtures.

Packaging

Debhelper compat 14 with a two-package arch:all split, Build-Depends-Indep with <!nocheck> on test-only tools, complete runtime Depends, no maintainer scripts, install/manpages/docs/examples files that match the tree, five autopkgtests, a sane initial changelog, correct Vcs fields and a current Standards-Version (4.7.4 against Policy 4.7.4.1). The man pages are built from the shipped POD with a fixed date. One minor thing is wrong: Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-perl cannot produce the pkg-perl test suite here, so debian/tests/pkg-perl/smoke-files is dead.

Issues

1. [minor] [packaging] Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-perl generates no tests: autodep8 needs Makefile.PL or Build.PL, which this source has neither of

• Files: debian/control:17, debian/tests/pkg-perl/smoke-files, t/build.t:32
• Basis: checked, in the package or with a reference tool
• Evidence: /usr/share/autodep8/support/perl/detect is test \( -d t -o -f test.pl \) -a \( -f Makefile.PL -o -f Build.PL \); the tree has t/ but no Makefile.PL and no Build.PL, and it ships its own debian/tests/control.
• Problem: The pkg-perl autopkgtest suite is generated by autodep8 from the Testsuite field only for sources that pass that check (the autopkgtest control specification states the same: a t/ directory and Makefile.PL or Build.PL), and autopkgtest only uses the implicit control file when debian/tests/control is absent. So the declared suite is never run: the t/ tests are not run against the installed modules as README.md and t/build.t:32 say, and debian/tests/pkg-perl/smoke-files (t/, examples/, debian/changelog) is used by nothing.
• Fix: Drop Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-perl and debian/tests/pkg-perl/ (the package's own debian/tests/control is what runs), or, if the installed-module run is wanted, add it explicitly to debian/tests/control with Depends: @, @builddeps@, pkg-perl-autopkgtest and Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner build-deps.

Verified

• Inventoried all 95 paths; read debian/ in full, both .pod sources, the heads of every lib/ module, dh_scala, dh-make-scala, smoke/ and the test fixtures, and searched the whole tree for licence/copyright wording and for loaded modules and executed commands.
• debian/copyright begins with the exact DEP-5 Format URL. Files: * (GPL-3+, 2026 Juan Manuel Mendez Rey) covers every path not named later, debian/* included; every module and script carries the same GPL-3+ header.
• The later .perltidyrc stanza matches that file: 2021-2025 Russ Allbery eagle@eyrie.org, 2012-2013 The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, SPDX FSFAP; FSFAP is not in /usr/share/common-licenses, and its full permission text is in the License: FSFAP paragraph. The file is a modified copy of rra-c-util's, which FSFAP allows.
• The prescan holders are fictional test data: t/lib.pl:158-161 (fixture_upstream_repo) write Copyright 2020 Example Corp. into a temporary tree, t/make-package.t:238 asserts it from licensecheck, t/make-copyright.t:23,61 use an EPFL BSD-3-clause LICENSE as a fixture, and t/make.expected/debian/copyright:13 expects Copyright: 2026 A B <a@example.org> in generated output. Those files are the uploader's own; debian/copyright:8-19 declares them GPL-3+ with a Comment explaining the embedded Apache-2.0/BSD/EPL wording.
• lib/Debian/DhScala/Make/Copyright.pm embeds hand-written licence-name tables and the standard Apache-2.0 header string, not copied third-party code; nothing in lib/ is vendored from debhelper, dh-golang or licensecheck.
• No non-free terms anywhere; GPL-3+ combined with FSFAP is fine; no file lacks a licence and none lacks its preferred form (there are no built files, images, fonts or generated sources in the tree).
• Runtime Depends cover what the installed code loads: Archive::Zip, Dpkg::* (libdpkg-perl), XML::LibXML, HTTP::Tiny with libio-socket-ssl-perl/libnet-ssleay-perl/ca-certificates, debhelper, maven-repo-helper and default-jdk-headless for the build system; git, licensecheck, xz-utils, libdpkg-perl for dh-make-scala; apt-file is only a Recommends, used by estimate.
• Build-Depends(-Indep) match actual use and the test-only tools are <!nocheck> (git, licensecheck, xz-utils, libfile-stripnondeterminism-perl); the build itself compiles nothing, only generating man pages with pod2man from perl.
• debhelper 14.5 on the reviewing system provides debhelper-compat (= 14), the recommended level, so debhelper-compat (= 14) is satisfiable; Policy is 4.7.4.1, so Standards-Version 4.7.4 is current.
• At compat 14 dh skips override_dh_auto_test on nocheck by itself, so the explicit ifeq is redundant but harmless; dh_missing --fail-missing only sees files in debian/tmp, which this build leaves empty, so t/, the .pod files and the dotfiles are not a missing-file failure.
• Source format 3.0 (native), version 0.1, distribution unstable, changelog date Sat 2026-10-03 is a real Saturday; no maintainer scripts; the install/manpages/docs/examples files match the installed layout; the one lintian override (Depends: debhelper) is justified for a debhelper add-on providing dh-sequence-scala.
• scala-2.13 and scala-library-2.13 are not in the archive lists but are built by source package scala-2.13 waiting in NEW, so the autopkgtest Depends on them is not a fault.
• Coverage limit: t/*.t other than build.t and make-copyright.t, the bodies of most lib/ modules and the contents of the example trees were searched, not read line by line; no additional copyright holders, licence names or external commands surfaced.
• There is no debian/watch, and the package is native, so none is needed.
• Every pointer of debian/copyright to /usr/share/common-licenses names a file that is there (GPL-3).

Not confirmed

• scala3 is in neither the archive lists nor the NEW queue, yet two autopkgtest stanzas depend on it; if it is not accepted, build-library 3 and build-library cross cannot run.
• Whether examples/scala-xml-2.12/rules.before is entirely the uploader's own work: it is presented as the hand-written rules it replaced in scala-xml-2.12, and debian/copyright attributes it (through Files: *) to the uploader, which I could not check against another source.

Proposed changes

None.