Re: [PATCH/RFC] dpkg-shlibdeps: ignore shell scripts

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> we could implement this easily. Change dpkg-shlibdeps to accept
> directories and not only binaries and assume that when a directory is
> passed you want dpkg-shlibdeps to scan all files for binaries according
> to its own logic (which would be is_elf() right now but it could be
> expanded later to support Mac OS X if needed).

Is the idea to use this to fix debhelper’s troubles in coping with
object files in /usr/lib without a .so extension [1]?  My only worry
would be how to cope with false positives (both non-ELF files that
happen to start with the ELF magic bytes and ELF files that should not
be factored into ${shlibs:Depends}).

I have to admit examining every file to root out the ELF files feels
like overkill to me, but if this would be useful to Joey then I’d be
willing to give it a try.

Thanks for the feedback.
Jonathan

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/35733
Colin Watson makes a suggestion in that bug log that I rather like:

| lintian uses file(1), whereas debhelper looks at extensions and then
| (in the case of dh_strip) uses file(1) if the extension is one it
| recognizes. Maybe these tools should have a flag to look at certain
| extra shared library extensions, if running 'file' over the whole
| source tree is still too expensive? 'dh_strip -Slsm'?
| 
| I'd be willing to come up with a patch for this if you think it's a
| good idea.