Re: Automatic Debug Packages
Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> writes:
> Not having anything to do with Ubuntu, I don't know anything about the
> details, but they have had automatic debug packages and automated
> crash report stuff for quite a while, a couple of years IIRC. The
> specs for that are here:
>
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/apt-get-debug-symbols
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/automated-problem-reports
Ah, thank you!
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AptElfDebugSymbols is the specification. It does
use *.ddeb. There isn't any clear statement about how *.ddeb packages
differ from *.deb packages. It looks like, by and large, they don't,
except they may not need to contain the same set of things. The packages
are not in debian/control or the things fed from it, but are in *.changes.
Ubuntu is creating one debug package per binary package, as I and a few
other people have said we prefer. However, they're using the
gnu_debuglink method, not the id method, so they don't have the one
problem with that method previously identified in this thread when the
same binary is copied into multiple packages.
The debug packages depend on the packages for which they have symbols,
which solves the problem of not installing debug packages that both
provide symbols for the same binary.
The proposal appears to only work for packages using debhelper, although
the steps are laid out so presumably they could be done manually if need
be.
Ubuntu uses -dbgsym as the magic namespace. I don't know if it would be
good for us to do the same or to use a different namespace to avoid
problems for them in cases where we decide to build the package manually
via debian/control and debian/rules.
It looks like the plan with *.ddeb is to treat them specially in the
archive software and divert them into a different tree in the archive
instead of using a separate archive area, which I think they're doing
now from that page. It also looks like one of the justifications for the
separate package is to hide them in the apt front-end so that users don't
see all the additional packages. I'm personally skeptical this is a good
idea, although I can see the merits of not returning them in apt-cache
search.
Ah, and it looks like the automated crash reporting offers to download the
-dbgsym packages and install them.
I don't see any sign in this of a share.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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