Sunday, February 8, 2009

Emacs mode for machine-readable copyright files !

Quite a fair amount of time has flown since my decision to implement an emacs mode for the proposed machine-readable format for debian/copyright files. A have to admit that I had left that sleeping for quite a long while. But I took my courage, and rewrote nearly everything I had done so far. I'm quite happy with the results, to be truthful. The debian-mr-copyright-mode features:
  • syntax highlighting
  • a coverage mode show all files in the package, including the ones not covered by the copyright file
  • the coverage mode shows which glob matches a given file
  • it provides links to visit files and go to the declaration leading to a given label
The aim of this mode is to provide a quick check for uncovered files in a package, and also means to verify if the license of a file is not misrepresented.

The code can be downloaded from the git repository, accessible using

git clone git://git.debian.org/git/users/fourmond/debian-mr-copyright-mode.git

No debian package is available for the time being, although that could definitely change after lenny is out. I hope this emacs mode will help the new format to be widely adopted.

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