Re: debhelper-compat should allow >= relations
On July 30, 2022 6:15:30 PM UTC, Dima Kogan <dkogan@debian.org> wrote:
>Hi. This probably has been covered before, but it's so consistently
>annoying that I'd like to bring it up again.
>
>Currently the Debian build tools strongly encourage packages to have
>exactly
>
> Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 13)
>
>This works fine if you're building for Debian/sid in 2022. It does not
>work in any other context. I have a very common use case: at work I'm
>maintaining several APT repos for the packages we use for several
>distros (the last few releases of Debian and Ubuntu). The latest Debian
>already has the packages in it, so the Build-Depends line is exactly as
>above. But this means that building the package for any of the older
>releases fails. And if I say something reasonable like
>
> Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (>= 11)
>
>Then this happens when building the package on sid:
>
> dh: warning: Found invalid debhelper-compat relation: debhelper-compat (>= 11)
> dh: warning: * Please format the relation as (example): debhelper-compat (= 13)
> dh: warning: * Note that alternatives, architecture restrictions, build-profiles etc. are not supported.
> dh: warning: * If this is not possible, then please remove the debhelper-compat relation and insert the
> dh: warning: compat level into the file debian/compat. (E.g. "echo 13 > debian/compat")
> dh: error: Could not parse desired debhelper compat level from relation: debhelper-compat (>= 11)
> make: *** [debian/rules:8: clean] Error 255
>
>It isn't helpful. Most packages (including mine) are very vanilla, and
>there isn't any difference between debhelper 11 or 12 or 13. I'm having
>to patch debian/control every time I do a build, and this isn't a useful
>use of my time. Can we please loosen this in some way?
Is your package compatible with debhelper 14? If so, how do you know?
Scott K
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