Re: dh_strip with multiple -dbgsym packages

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 11:54:41AM +1100, Ken McDonell wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm one of the upstream developers for pcp (https://pcp.io/).
> 
> After about 20 years of not having debug packages for Debian-like builds because we could not get it to work, we've returned to the issue.
> 
> I made this change to the rules file:
> 
> - if dh_strip -a --no-automatic-dbgsym; then :; else dh_strip -a; fi
> + dh_strip -a
> 
> Now there are some 38 packages build from our rules and control file, and this change emitted an additional 6 packages with -dbgsym names ... good so far.
> 
> But when these packages are installed we're seeing multiple errors like:
> 
> dpkg: error processing archive pcp-testsuite-dbgsym_7.0.3-1_i386.deb (--install):
>  trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/debug/.build-id/03/1ee94b5063d0d1066fad44f5c91ac129946338.debug', which is also in package pcp-dbgsym 7.0.3-1
> 
> and sure enough, dbpkg-deb -c confirms that this file is in *both* the pcp-dbgsym and pcp-testsuite-dbgsym .deb package files.
> 
> Strangely, this failed on Debian 11, 12 and 13 in our overnight build and QA, but not on any of the Ubuntu systems with corresponding Debian bases.
> 
> Any clues or hints would be most appreciated.

The error is caused by having debug info for the same binary in both
-dbgsym packages.

Move dh_strip below the uninstall lines.

cu
Adrian