Bug#188731: debian-policy: "strip --strip-unneeded" is insufficient

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

Russ Allbery:
> Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:
> 
>> Thank you for following up.
> 
>> Here is a minimal patch, for which I am seeking seconds.  I didn't
>> include a recommendation to use dh_strip because we generally keep such
>> recommendations in footnotes rather than the text of Policy, and we are
>> trying to reduce the number of footnotes -- but I don't mind adding it
>> if others think it would be a good idea (and it wouldn't need
>> seconding).
> 
> Looks good to me.  Seconded.
> 
> On an entirely unrelated note (and probably a larger project than anyone
> will be able to tackle any time soon), I think it would be very helpful if
> we had some way of annotating what parts of Policy are just handled for
> you if you use debhelper in the normal way (perhaps with references to the
> tools involved).  Maybe with background shading or an icon or something?
> I think Policy needs to state all of the rules, including the ones
> implemented by other tools, but at the same time nearly everyone doing
> Debian packaging is using debhelper (either directly or indirectly), so
> it's a bit of a disservice to people to ask them to wade through a bunch
> of specifications for stuff that normally they don't and shouldn't think
> about.
> 

I think I agree with your suggestion of shading policy requirements that
are already covered by common tools.

At the moment, I am hesitant as to whether I should second Sean's text
as it is or point out that text fails to handle cross-building[1] (note
the cross building issue is not a regression).
  On one front, it would be technically correct - on the other front, I
fear most maintainers will be overloaded by irrelevant details that is
already handled for them.

Well, given it is not a regression, the choice is strictly speaking
"obvious" in this case but the general issue stands.

Thanks,
~Niels

[1] For cross build support, you would have to use
"$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-strip" rather than "strip"... Except if you are
doing a "Canadian Cross" build in which case you *might* need
"$(DEB_TARGET_GNU_TYPE)-strip" instead in very rare cases.

Plus you have to ensure DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE is defined - either by
including a dpkg makefile (recommended) or defining it yourself via
dpkg-buildflags which will imply $(shell ...).  We would like to avoid
the latter due to the high overhead involved in doing that.