Re: Experimental ddeb support in debhelper and lintian (Was: Re: -dbg packages; are they actually useful?)

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On 2015-04-04 10:54, Niels Thykier wrote:
> On 2015-04-04 09:54, Josselin Mouette wrote:
>> Le jeudi 02 avril 2015 à 19:37 +0200, Esokrates a écrit : 
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am particularly interested in automatic debug packages, as the current 
>>> situation is pretty messy imho. I found 
>>> https://wiki.debian.org/AutomaticDebugPackages.
>>> Does anyone know the status of this? Will this be a goal for Stretch?
>>> This and reproducible builds would make Debian the perfect distribution for 
>>> me.
>>> Whats in the way of making it happen? Lack of people willing to do it?
>>
>> Last time I checked, dak was still missing code to handle the
>> generated .ddeb files.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
> 
> 
> And it *still* does!  But there are a few things that have changed!
> 
>  * There is an experimental branch for debhelper to generate these
>    automatically available.
> [...]
> 
> Enjoy,
> ~Niels
> 
> [...]


This branch (with some bug fixes) are now in experimental if anyone
wants to play with it.

 * Remember to set DH_BUILD_DDEBS!  Else ddebs will not be built
 * dak support is still missing
 * Thanks to the reproducibility team, the APT maintainers and the dpkg
   maintainers.  They have either helped me solve a few bugs or fixed a
   bug in their respective tools.  In particular:
   - the reproducibility team reported a number of "brown paper bag
     bugs" (like dh_strip throwing away debug symbols in regular -dbg
     pkgs /o\ ).
   - dpkg-genchanges no longer emits warnings when building .ddebs.
   - apt now properly handles the "pkg:arch" dependency.
 * Some caveats remain (like lack of documentation and there is no valid
   migration path from -dbg to .ddebs).

Thanks,
~Niels