Re: Another take on package relationship substvars
On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 at 20:43:21 +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
> Simon McVittie:
> > On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 at 19:32:21 +0100, Niels Thykier wrote:
> > > We could also make unused substvars a hard failure (FTBFS).
> >
> > I'd prefer not this
>
> Reminder: My proposal only covers ${foo:Depends} and similar substvars. The
> first example you present uses substvars that do not match that pattern.
Sorry, did you mean that your alternate proposal is: we could make unused
substvars **that match *:Depends** (and the other related patterns) a hard
failure, without affecting substvars not matching that pattern? If so,
that wasn't obvious to me!
If the scope of "unused substvars => hard failure" is limited to
foo:Depends and so on, then yes, I agree that the concern I described
doesn't apply.
Another reason to be cautious about making missing foo:Depends a hard
failure is that it would mean tools usually can't add new :Depends without
either gating it behind a debhelper compat level bump (or equivalent),
or making potentially large numbers of dependent packages regress
(usually discouraged). So I still prefer your initial proposal.
smcv
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