generating debian/control while building source package

[Johan Van de Wauw <johan.vandewauw@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I noticed there are quite a few packages that generate part of the
control file while building a source package from git. I noticed this
for grass and postgis.

I don't really like this approach. Eg when trying to backport the
recent security changes for postgis to ubuntu (trusty) this leads to a
number of new changes which are only visible when making a debdiff. It
also seems that the control file in the actual package may contain
different things depending on the installed postgresql version.

I wonder: is there a way to build a source package without rebuilding
the control file? Would it not be better to make this a separate step
in the build proces which is not run automatically?
I think in a way the arguments against autobuilding (see [1]) also
apply to adding these dependencies while building the actual source
package from vcs - I'm much more likely to check the debian/control
file in the vcs tree then in the source package.

I'm not at all an expert so feel free to convince me I'm not right :-)

Kind Regards,
Johan
[1] https://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html