Bug#658009: debian-policy: dpkg-buildpackage -rroot-command out of date
Package: debian-policy
Severity: minor
C.1.2 says:
If no root-command is supplied then dpkg-buildpackage will take
no special action to gain root privilege, so that for most
packages it will have to be invoked as root to start with.
This is wrong according to the dpkg-buildpackage man page, which says:
3. If a specific target has been selected with the -T or
--target option, it calls that target and stops here.
Otherwise it calls fakeroot debian/rules clean to clean the
build-tree (unless -nc is specified)
...
5. It calls debian/rules build followed by fakeroot
debian/rules binary-target (unless a source-only build has been
requested with -S). Note that binary-target is either binary
(default case, or if -b is specified) or binary-arch (if -B is
specified) or binary-indep (if -A is specified).
...
9. If -tc is specified, it will call fakeroot debian/rules clean
again. Finally it calls dpkg-source --after-build.
I suggest changing the wording to:
If no root-command is supplied then dpkg-buildpackage will use
the fakeroot command, which is sufficient to build most packages
without actually requiring root privileges.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (530, 'testing'), (520, 'unstable'), (510, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
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