Static analysis tools are criminally underused in software engineering; not only can they detect many common problems, pitfalls and security issues, unlike test suites, no additional code needs to be written. Futhermore, many tools provide helpful hints on how to fix the issues they expose. In Debian, Lintian dissects packages and tries to find bugs and policy violations. It contains automated checks for many aspects of Debian policy as well as some checks for common errors. Reports are generated and published on the lintian.debian.org website. In this talk you will learn about the past, present and future of Lintian, as well as how to contribute and make Debian better.
Speakers: Chris Lamb