* Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> [2025-04-08 10:33]:
On Mon, 07 Apr 2025 at 14:08:23 +0200, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:it appears that currently there is no requirement for d/control to stay the same before and after a build. However, many things require this to be the case, and ftp-master also requires this in their reject-faq [1].[1] https://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html "debian/control breakage #2"I am not a ftp team member, but I believe that point is specifically forbidding the set of built packages from changing during the build, and not the rest of debian/control:- regenerating debian/control during clean to rewrite "less important" fields like Uploaders or Description: reluctantly allowed
I think we should not allow this as it a number of tools run clean in different situations and environments and that could result in a changed d/control without the user noticing. Instead I would propose that clean can generate a new d/control and fail if the content is different from the current one. A number of packages do this already and I think it is nice that there is an explicit error instead of an implicit change.
Over all I would appreciate a policy change as discussed here as I invested already quiet some time to find the causes of random non reproducible packages due to changes in d/control during the build. The last one being #1118589.
Thanks for the work! Jochen
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