Bug#653513: debian-installer: build/README lies, code says: USE_UDEBS_FROM ?= unstable
Package: debian-installer
Version: 20110106+squeeze3
Severity: important
Hi.
Quoting some parts of build/README:
| Warning: The build system for the installer is often tightly bound to the
| version of Debian for which it is targeted. If you are using stable, use
| "apt-get source debian-installer" to get a version of the installer that
| will build on your system. If you are using testing or unstable, check out
| a copy of the installer using the command
| "git clone git://git.debian.org/d-i/debian-installer.git"
|
| Recipe:
| […]
| - Create your own sources.list.udeb.local, otherwise the build host's
| sources.list is taken as a template for sources.list.udeb.
This is untrue. On my *stable* system, that defaults to *unstable*:
| $ make sources.list.udeb
| Using generated sources.list.udeb:
| deb copy:/home/kibi/debian-installer-20110106+squeeze3/build/ localudebs/
| deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main/debian-installer
|
| While /etc/apt/sources.lists contains:
| # deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze main
|
| deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze main
| deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze main
|
| deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
| deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
|
| deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze-updates main
| deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian squeeze-updates main
See the “f.” step in #653505. I guess that explains why debootstrap-udeb
is at version 1.0.38 in the resulting image, and why I get a missing
sha1sum while trying to run debootstrap, since busybox is stable's,
without that sha1sum applet.
Workaround for that particular problem:
1. fetch an armel coreutils package.
2. extract it somewhere and pick the sha1sum binary.
3. wget it under /bin, and chmod a+x it.
I suggest adding a reference in the quoted part of the recipe above,
like “see the USE_UDEBS_FROM variable below”. It says:
| USE_UDEBS_FROM
| Normally the codename of the release to use for the build. Defaults to
| unstable for daily builds.
| Included in /etc/udebs-source in most initrds.
Daily builds are defined nowhere, so it can't be concluded whether
running “make build_something” under build/ is considered a daily build.
(Or maybe the intent was to document that daily builds are the reasons
for the default's being unstable. I guess it can be understood both
ways.)
Anyway, please make it clear that even on a stable system one needs to
set that variable to stable to get a stable build. Having bits taken
from unstable will randomly break custom builds, and make people waste
hours.
Mraw,
KiBi.
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