Bug#752276: /usr/bin/dose-distcheck: support arch and version comparison with --checkonly

[Ralf Treinen <treinen@free.fr>]

Hi Vagrant,

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 07:11:17PM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> Package: dose-distcheck
> Version: 3.2.2-1
> Severity: wishlist
> File: /usr/bin/dose-distcheck
> 
> It would be nice if --checkonly supported the full syntax you're likely to
> find in a Build-Depends line in a .dsc file, including things such as
> architecture [arch], or version comparisons (>= x.y.z):

AFAIK, only (=x.y.z) version comparisons are supported in the --check-only
option.

[arch] specifiers would be misleading here, as one would it expect to mean
"check that package in that version on that arch", which is not the meaning
of [arch] in a dsc file. Rather, if package p1 has a build-dependency on
package p2[arch], this means that when you compile package p1 on [arch]
then you need p2. It does, a priori, not mean that p2 has to be of
architecture arch. Furthermore, build-depencies may contain alternatives
(even though they are rarely used in build-dependencies), and they do not
make sense in the context of the --check-only option.

>   dose-debcheck --failures --explain --checkonly "debhelper, cpio, kmod, gcc-4.8 (>= 4.8.2-21)" /var/lib/apt/lists/*amd64*Packages
>   (W)Debcudf: Package (gcc-4.8,4.8.2-21) does not have an associated cudf version
>   The applications raised this exception : Not_found

It is not normal that an exception is raised, this seems to be a bug.

If you wish to check build-dependencies you should rather use
dose-builddebcheck. You can "almost" run it on the .dsc file itself -
you just have to change in the dsc file the "Source: p" into "Package: p".
We probably should allow dose-debbuildcheck to support this syntax.

Does dose-builddebcheck the job? If not, could you please explain your
usecase?

Cheers -Ralf.