Re: Bug#884999: debhelper: Please default Rules-Require-Root to no

[Guillem Jover <guillem@hadrons.org>]

Hi!

On Fri, 2019-05-24 at 13:42:28 +0900, Hideki Yamane wrote:
> > > In summary: The debhelper fundamentally cannot affect whether
> > > Rules-Requires-Root: no is default or not.  The debhelper compat level
> > > system is the wrong interface to do this as well.
> > > 
> > > That said, in a distant future, I hope we can flip the default of
> > > Rules-Requires-Root.  But when that comes, it will not be via a
> > > debhelper compat level AFAICT.
> 
>  If we want to implement "Rules-Requires-Root: no" mandatory,
>  is it dpkg-dev and policy issue?

The current thinking is that it would be acceptable to switch the
default by introducing a new dpkg-dev-specific compat level. See
<https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/Spec/DpkgDevCompatLevel>.

I think the argument put forward by Adrian Bunk, about this possibly
being just another transition among many we do that can break
non-smallish parts of the archive makes sense, except that I fear in
this case it might cause silent breakage, or at least breakage not
detectable w/o an archive-wide rebuild, with several permutations,
such as binary-indep-only, binary-arch-only, etc. And this still does
not cover external users. And in any case I've not heard anyone
expressing interest in handling such transition, so that's pretty much
a non-starter.

Thanks,
Guillem