[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#529281: Bug#529281: Please add the option to autodetect distribution from changelog

[Roger Leigh]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 01:06:27PM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote:
> When used by DDs to build packages to upload, sbuild has the unexpected
> behaviour of ignoring the distribution set in the changelog.
> 
> Of course this behaviour is what is needed in build daemons, but it
> would be useful if sbuild could be able to do it both ways.

This has come up in the past, because it's an obviously useful
feature.  When we had our conversation on IRC about this, I forgot
about one major problem blocking this:

- if building a package downloaded from a mirror,
  ("sbuild package_version" i.e. no .dsc extension since there's
  no local file), we need to download the package *inside* a
  chroot.  I.e. we are forced to choose the chroot (distribution)
  *before* downloading the package.  Until the package is
  downloaded, we can't see which distribution was in the changelog.

- if building using local files,
  ("sbuild /path/to/package_version.dsc") we can easily parse the
  DSC.  However, the distribution isn't put in the DSC either!
  It only does into the .changes.

In consequence, we can only realistically do this when using local
files.  However, this would require unpacking the sources in order
to read debian/changelog.  For large packages, this would be very
wasteful of time and diskspace because we would have to then
delete the unpacked sources before copying the DSC/orig/diff.gz
into the build chroot where they will be unpacked again for the
real build.


I still this this is a useful feature.  This issue does need
resolving before it can be implemented, however.


Regards,
Roger

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