Favourite alias of the week: 'dico'

diff provides one interesting option, '-y':

       -y, --side-by-side
              output in two columns

If you combine it with '--suppress-common-lines':

       --suppress-common-lines
              do not output common lines

you get a very nice to view diff in two columns, where only the different lines are displayed.

My alias is:

alias dico='diff -y --suppress-common-lines'

Setting DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME when using dch

When using dch -i or -v, this tool will try to infer what name and email address the maintainer wants.

The gist of this short post is: check the values of DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME environment variables before running the build.

And of course you can set them with a simple export command.

From dch man page:

       If  either  --increment or --newversion is used, the name and email for
       the new version will be determined  as  follows.   If  the  environment
       variable  DEBFULLNAME is set, this will be used for the maintainer full
       name; if not, then NAME will be checked.  If the  environment  variable
       DEBEMAIL  is  set,  this  will  be used for the email address.  If this
       variable has the form "name ", then  the  maintainer  name  will
       also  be  taken  from  here if neither DEBFULLNAME nor NAME is set.  If
       this variable is not set, the same test is performed on the environment
       variable  EMAIL.  Next, if the full name has still not been determined,
       then use getpwuid(3) to determine the name from the password file.   If
       this  fails,  use the previous changelog entry.  For the email address,
       if it has not been set from DEBEMAIL or EMAIL, then look in  /etc/mail-
       name,  then  attempt  to build it from the username and FQDN, otherwise
       use the email address in the previous changelog entry.  In other words,
       it's  a  good  idea  to  set  DEBEMAIL  and DEBFULLNAME when using this
       script.