RFC: Addition of "Builder: " field to non-maintainer compiled binaries
Hi,
There is currently no way to determine who compiled a deb if it wasn't
the maintainer (e.g. the vast majority of non-i386 uploads)[1]. IMHO,
it'd be very helpful to have this information for trying to track down
problems with packages which weren't compiled by the maintainer.
I think the Right solution would be to alter dpkg-buildpackage to have
it include this information in the deb and .changes file, and to use
the value of this new field to sign the .changes file with. This
would leave the Maintainer: field intact in the .changes file
(non-i386 builders wouldn't need to use -m"foo" anymore), and provide
the info required without the kludgey hack I'm about to suggest.
Suggestion: all arch-only uploaders hack (I would strongly suggest by
way of a script) debian/control of packages they're building, adding
a line like this (obviously, using their name, not mine) to the top of
debian/control:
|XBC-Builder: James Troup <jjtroup@scm.brad.ac.uk>
When this is done, dpkg -I on a deb shows:
|22:47:51@hades| ~/temp $dpkg -I leave*.deb
| new debian package, version 2.0.
| size 6618 bytes: control archive= 476 bytes.
| 528 bytes, 14 lines control
| Package: leave
| Version: 1.6-1
| Section: utils
| Priority: optional
| Architecture: i386
| Depends: libc6
| Installed-Size: 19
| Maintainer: Some Maintainer <some@maintainer.or.other.org>
| Description: Remind you when you have to leave
| Leave waits until the specified time, then reminds you that you have
| to leave. You are reminded 5 minutes and 1 minute before the actual
| time, at the time, and every minute thereafter. When you log off,
| leave exits just before it would have printed the next message.
| builder: James Troup <jjtroup@scm.brad.ac.uk>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^[2]
What do y'all think? It's a quick'n'easy hack to existing auto-build
scripts that will work with 99% of packages[3] and solves the problem
most of the time. As I say, it's not the best solution, but it's the
easiest to implement right now.
Any objections? Any suggestions for a field name other than
"Builder"? "Compiler"? "Arch-Compiler"? "Uploader"?
[1] One could refer to a debian-devel-changes archive, but I think
this is somewhat sub-optimal as a ``solution''.
[2] I would like that to be "Builder", but I can't seem to convince
dpkg-deb to do it.
[3] It will fail on packages which do strange things with
debian/control (like produce it from a debian/control.in), but those
are few and far between, and can be compensated for.
--
James
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