Bug#397939: clean rule behavior underspecified and inconsistent with common practice
> In 2006, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
>
> > during the last months i had to review several packages. Quite a number
> > of packages were not buildable two times (eg. "unrepresentable changes
> > to source"). Most of these packages used svn-buildpackage or
> > cvs-buildpackage. This bug is quite annoying as one needs to either
> > manual interact or run dpkg-source -x again.
Le Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 08:41:36PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
>
> Of course policy forbids that. The requirements in policy for
> "debian/rules clean" are very stringent --- to avoid the
> "unrepresentable changes" it would be enough to _remove_ the modified
> (regenerated) files, but policy requires undoing everything the build
> target did, or in other words restoring the original files.
Hello everybody,
I also think that the Policy is hard to apply as it is written and does not
correspond to current practice. First, it is hard for a Debian build system to
distinguish between a change introduced by the developer and a change
introduced by the upstream build system. Second, the practice of deleting an
autogenerated file to cancel changes is widesperead but not recognised by the
Policy.
If we think about the purpose instead of the wording, things are clearer. It
has been since Lenny at least that packages to be released in Stable are
expected to be able to be built twice in a row.
How about solving #397939 by writing that the clean target must ensure that
there are no more differences between two builds in a row, compared with two
builds in two fresh source trees ? Details about reverting build system
effects and deleting files can then go in a footnote.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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