Re: Test suites after build and Build-Depends.
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009, Adam D. Barratt wrote:
> I'd guess Charles meant the following addition to
> README.feature-removal-schedule, from the dpkg source package:
>
> What: substvars support in dpkg-source and dpkg-genchanges
> Status: deprecated
> When: lenny+1
> Warning: program
> Why:
> substvars do not make sense during generation of .dsc and .changes files.
> This also means that it won't be possible anymore to override the Format
> field output by dpkg-genchanges.
Note that this decision has been taken because:
- dpkg-source has never used debian/substvars as input and did nothing
unless you gave the -T option, however the source package can't pass
additional option to the dpkg-source call made by dpkg-buildpackage
(so it never worked as Charles expected it to work, and furthermore
the dpkg-source call happens very early in the build process which means
the substvars content for this call would have to be fixed or generated
in the clean rule)
- dpgk-genchanges has very few content that is copied straight from
debian/control and the substvars support only ever allowed to
change some fields like the Format version (which doesn't make any
sense)
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009, Charles Plessy wrote:
> I am not sure I understand. From reading the man page of dpkg-source, it seems
> to me that:
>
> - The 'control' file is used to generate the .dsc file.
> - The location of the 'control' file is debian/control by default, but this
> can be changed with the -c option.
>
> I have not found evidence in the documentation nor in the source that the
> building of the .dsc file is a two-step process as you describe.
>
> aqwa『~』$ grep -A1 -B1 dsc /usr/bin/dpkg-source
Grepping dpkg-source doesn't mean much nowadays, most of the code is in
the modules Dpkg::Source::* so not in a single file.
> I still do not understand what makes it "nonsense" to use substvars for the
> generation of the .dsc and .changes file.
I hope my answer clarifies the situation. Given that it has not been used
in 14 years, and that we had no wishlist bug in that direction, it seems
pretty clear that it's useless and that there are other better ways to
achieve similar functionnality.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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