Re: [Summary]: Another take on package relationship substvars

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

thomas@goirand.fr:
> [...]
>
> Hi Niels,
>
>
> Thanks a lot for your work on this, I very much agreed with the premiss that subst vars were a thing easy to fall into traps. It is a very welcomed improvement to automate them and avoid mistakes.
>
>
> Is there a place where you wrote some kind of doc about how to use debputy or debhelper compat 14? Does one need to add debputy as build-depends, and that is it? Pointers to URLs welcome.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> Thomas Goirand (zigo)

Hi Thomas

Thanks for the feedback. :)

I have added the information you requested below. For follow ups on how 
to migrate or `debputy` vs. `debhelper`, then I am happy to have 
discussions on those. However, please move it to a separate 
thread/channel/subject to ensure people can easily tell whether the 
discussion is relevant to them. :)


# For debhelper:

Usage of debhelper compat 14 can be done by replacing
the Build-Depends on `debhelper-compat (= 13)` with
`debhelper (>= 13.15.2~)` and then adding `X-DH-Compat: 14` to the 
source stanza of `debian/control`.

Remember to check the compat upgrade checklist in
`man 7 debhelper-compat-upgrade-checklist` before doing it and keep in 
mind that compat 14 is open for additional changes.



# For debputy:

On what debputy is, I would recommend the ITP bug: 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1029645


On how to use it at its minimum level (sufficient for getting automatic 
relationship substvars), the short story is:

   # Note: 0.1.22 is not a typo; it was uploaded to unstable earlier
   # today. It provides better documentation related to migration
   # plus some other unrelated bugfixes.
   $ apt satisfy 'dh-debputy (>= 0.1.22)`
   $ debputy migrate-from-dh \
      --migration-target dh-sequence-zz-debputy-rrr
      [--apply-changes]
   [... Read the output and handle any manual migration items ...]

The vast majority of packages should be able to use `debputy` at this 
level - some with more manual migration than others. The 
`dh-sequence-zz-debputy` migration target (note the missing `-rrr`) is 
more likely to have missing features that would be necessary for 
wide-spread adoption.

For additional information, you may want to read:

 * man debputy . Particularly the section on `migrate-from-dh` and
  `INTEGRATION LEVELS`
 * GETTING-STARTED-WITH-dh-debputy.md (/usr/share/doc/dh-debputy)
 * MANIFEST-FORMAT.md (/usr/share/doc/dh-debputy)



Though, either way (debhelper or `debputy`), you will be on fairly 
cutting edge features. :)

Best regards,
Niels