Bug#961138: autodep8 uses host APT packages to generate dependencies for pkg-r-autopkgtest tests

[Stefano Rivera <stefanor@debian.org>]

Package: autodep8
Version: 0.16
Severity: normal

The autodep8 generator for pkg-r-autopkgtest uses APT lists to determine
which R packages from DESCRIPTION exist in Debian. autodep8 is run
outside the test runner, not inside it, so this makes the behaviour
dependant on the packages available to the test runner host.

Here's the code that introduced this approach:
https://salsa.debian.org/ci-team/autodep8/-/merge_requests/10

It all works when the autopkgtest runner has approximately the same
packages available as the release under test, but that's not always the
case.

I noticed that the r-bioc-hdf5 package's test misses a dependency on
r-cranc-bit64 when the test is run from an older stable release that
predates this package.

I don't know how else you can solve this particular problem, though...

SR