Re: FTBFS if built twice in a row
On Fri, 29 Jun 2007, Gerard Lledó wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been looking for FTBFS bugs in the BTS and I've noticed that
> there are lots of FTBFS if built twice.
>
> My understanding of debian is far from being complete, but in order to
> be built for a second time a clean is performed before (at least,
> using debuild). So directory should look like a fresh $ apt-get source
> packagename. And the contents of the files should also be the same.
> Checking that would be easier than running 2 times the compilation
> process and maybe it could be implemented as a checking tool that
> debuild could run before finishing the package, like it does with
> lintian.
>
> Or maybe I'm missing something, and performing a clean doesn't mean
> having a fresh source.
Consider the case where the .diff.gz for a package updates a .po file but
not the corresponding .mo file (which are usually included in the original
tarball as well).
You need to run ./configure at least to be able to run the clean target,
and you need to do "make" so that the .mo file is overwritten by the one
from the updated .po file (via msgfmt).
Then you try to build a second time and dpkg-source realizes that
it can't represent the change from the old .mo file to the new .mo file,
as it is a binary file.
I don't know how much typical this example is, but the two "can't build
twice in a row" bugs I got were like that.
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