Hello,
On Wed 10 May 2023 at 11:47PM +02, Ansgar wrote:
Dear ctte, please consider overruling the dpkg maintainer to include
the patch from #994388[1].
Currently dpkg contains code to emit the merged-/usr warning, that's
dead code on Debian, but which becomes active when packages from the
Debian archive are copied unmodified into derivatives.
The heart of the issue is how dpkg is a native package. What we're
talking about is not the Debian system, but the Debian archive as it
exists independently of the Debian system.
dpkg has an upstream existence that's independent of Debian, and it's
perfectly legitimate for that version of dpkg to emit the warning. The
problem here might be caused by how the Debian archive is implicitly
being used to distribute upstream dpkg.
This is not in itself a problem -- we distribute a lot of stuff in
source packages that does not form part of the Debian system. But in
this case, this distribution that's occurring might conflict with how
Debian is seeking to provide a product not just to end users, but also
to those building derivatives.
One simple solution is for dpkg to become a non-native package, carrying
Debian-specific patches to do things like remove the warning code.