Bug#306125: Please add a warning about permissions not being preserved in files not present in the .orig.tar.gz

[Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>]

Package: dpkg-dev
Version: 1.10.27
Severity: wishlist

Hello,

After being bitten by #306113, I thought that this scenario can be
prevented by some automated checks.

So I'm proposing that dpkg-buildpackage could, after invoking
debian/rules clean, check for files in the debian/ directory which have
executable permissions, and if there exist some (and it's not
debian/rules), issue a warning.

This can generate a list of 'suspect' files:

   find debian -perm +0111 -type f -not -name rules -not -regex '.*\(pre\|post\)\(inst\|rm\)$'

It's trickier to ask tar to check if those files are in the
.orig.tar.gz, especially doing it without unpacking the whole things for
every single one of them; however, that is not necessarily needed, as
we're talking about printing a warning and letting the build continue.

The warning could be something like:

  The following files have been found to be executable in the debian/
  directory: unless they are stored inside the .orig.tar.gz, their
  executable permission will be be lost and they cannot be invoked
  directly by build scripts:
    debian/file1
    debian/file2


Ciao,

Enrico

 System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11-1-686
Locale: LANG=it_IT.UTF-8@euro, LC_CTYPE=it_IT.UTF-8@euro (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages dpkg-dev depends on:
ii  binutils                      2.15-5     The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii  cpio                          2.5-1.2    GNU cpio -- a program to manage ar
ii  make                          3.80-9     The GNU version of the "make" util
ii  patch                         2.5.9-2    Apply a diff file to an original
ii  perl [perl5]                  5.8.4-8    Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  perl-modules                  5.8.4-8    Core Perl modules

-- no debconf information