[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#529281: Bug#630472: dpkg-dev: Please add Distribution to .dsc generated by dpkg-source -b

[Raphael Hertzog]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2011, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Attached is a patch to add the distribution to the .dsc

I don't like this. Source package migrate and can be reuploaded in
multiple places (including distributions of derivatives) without being
rebuilt.

The Distribution is part of the .changes file and it's enough there IMO.
I don't see a good reason to change this.

> This is currently only available in the changelog or the
> .changes.  However, tools like sbuild, which need to build
> in a distribution-specific chroot can't work out what the
> distribution is without unpacking the source tree and
> inspecting the changelog (which is impractical for a
> number of reasons, least of all efficiency).  This requires
> that sbuild be told the distribution by the user, and there
> can sometimes be problems as a result e.g. uploading
> experimental packages to unstable due to using "-d unstable"
> out of habit.

I have already been bitten by this and I made a concrete suggestion
here in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=529281#22

And in fact you're mixing two concepts, the chroot to use for the build
and the target distribution.

You can still use "-d <dist>" to infer the default chroot to use but you
should not override the target distribution set in the changelog unless
the users sets another flag "--force-distribution". If the flag is
missing and the two values differ, you should just abort with an
error.

I mean dpkg-genchanges uses the value from the changelog by default and
you should not overwrite the value generated unless you're in a context
where you know that you want to overwrite it. In that case, supplying one
more parameter is not an issue (I'd rather have the buildd config provide
one more parameter than requiring the casual users to change their
habits).

I'll let some time pass for the discussion but I will probably close
#630472 or tag it wontfix.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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