Bug#562606: FTBFS: unknown options to dh_ocaml
Jan Wagner wrote:
> Hi Mehdi,
>
> On Saturday 30 January 2010 14:47:34 Mehdi Dogguy wrote:
>>> Who should do backports in your eyes? Debian Developers? Maintainers?
>>> Nobody?
>> Certainly, not users. And, let's make that clear: it's not "in my eyes".
>> Ask other DDs or DMs about this particular question if you want to have
>> another opinion. At least, ask the usual maintainer for review before
>> proposing a backport. Doing otherwise seems wrong to me (unless you are
>> very confident with the code).
>
> thats you POV, there maybe others. Most maintainers don't care about
> backporting (like about their packages in stable and even old-stable).
>
It requires more work! That's the main reason. Most of the time, we
don't have time for that because we want to dedicate free time to fix RC
bugs or to prepare the next stable release.
Sometimes, we do some backports when it's really needed (e.g. when
another team needs a particular version of a package in Stable (or
whatever)). We are happy to do it when there is valid reasons behind.
Most people are happy with Stable and Old-stable exactly how they are
because they are feature-frozen and only security/important bugs are
fixed in those versions.
And, please don't make false assumptions. In our team, we try very hard
to fix any problem that arises in any of our packages in stable or
old-stable.
>>> Anyways ... you should provide correct (build-)dependencies, even if it
>>> would be better, if debhelper would provide a way to define such
>>> versioned dep for its own.
>> We already provide correct build-dependencies. Here, the only missing
>> thing is that our dh_ocaml uses features from debhleper 7.1.0. The
>> package dh-ocaml do not contain only the dh_ocaml script and ocaml
>> sequence, but also some other dev-tools. I see two solutions:
>>
>> - Make dh-ocaml depend on debhelper >= 7.1.0 (the exact version that
>> introduced the desired feature). But, I'm not really convinced that this
>> is the right solution because we may use all what dh-ocaml ships but
>> dh_ocaml.
>>
>> - Make dh-ocaml conflicts with debhelper << 7.1.0. But this solution
>> seems also wrong for the same reason I mentioned before.
>
> Sorry, I strongly disagree. I don't see any reason to not provide the correct
> versioned build-dep. You package is failing to build from source, if you need
> special versions of a package, you have to provide a correct control file.
>
Just recalling the problem so that other members can follow more easily:
OCaml is failing to build from source because dh-ocaml needs a
particular version of Debhelper at *runtime*. OCaml already depends on
the good version of dh-ocaml which provides runtime-map and checksum
options. Dh-ocaml indeed needs Debhelper 7.1.0 to have these options
working correctly.
dh-ocaml will not see his depends changing (just like the quilt package
do). We might correct to build-dep for OCaml (and we will certainly need
to make a lintian warning which says that Debhelper 7.1.0 is needed when
using "dh --with ocaml").
>> If you have a better/real solution, please share with us.
>> If not, I will not accept any of the solutions I've mentioned because
>> the problem arises *only* for the backport.
>
> Sorry ... this is exactly the point, why people mostly don't contact
> maintainers _before_ creating backports ... the ignorance of package
> maintainers about backporting. You are a good example for such behavior.
>
I'm sorry but I disagree. I do care about my packages (for any version).
But, sometimes the correct fix is not obvious. It doesn't mean I don't
want to fix the bug but that I looking for a good fix.
Regards,
--
Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي
http://dogguy.org/
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