[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#672711: Bug#672711: Bug#672711: sbuild: --append-to-version should set source:Version substvar

[Roger Leigh]

On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 10:13:53AM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> In sbuild we allow additional extensions (in additional to +bn)
> appended to the version number, which are used for custom rebuilds of
> packages.  However, it looks like the above logic in dpkg-source is
> only useful for binNMU versioning.
> 
> In sbuild, the way binNMUs have always been done is to create a
> new changelog entry with the binNMU version, and then do a
> binary-only build.  This works with the above logic.  However,
> while this mechanism works, it's clearly a bit of a hack.
> 
> It would be great if there was a way to specify an additional
> build version during a build to dpkg-buildpackage, which would
> not necessarily require an updated changelog entry, but could
> maybe be put into substvars as build:Version and so would hence
> be a more generalised and flexible solution.  sbuild could then
> adopt this for doing both binNMUs and other appended versions
> which change this build version.  This could default to
> binary:Version.  Alternatively, this could just be binary:Version
> itself, since the source:Version would just be the changelog
> version (special binNMU changelog entries no longer being
> required).

Just to expand on this:

The current situation, as I see it, is that the versions in
debian/changelog specify the source version.  The binary
version is always equal to the source version.  However, when
the version is +bn we treat this specially and have different
source and binary versions.

I think it would be much nicer if rather than having to use
heuristics, we could simply set the binary version directly
(with no changelog hacking required).  If dpkg-buildpackage
and/or the other dpkg tools could provide an option to
override the binary version from its default (source) version,
this would provide a clean, reliable mechanism.  It also need
not provide arbitrary versions; appending the build version to
the source version would be entirely sufficient.  Such a
mechanism could then be used by sbuild for binNMUs, and other
appended build versions.  And, more importantly, the
functionality would be exposed in a standard manner, so
the versioning mechanism would not be tied to how sbuild does
binNMUs, and would be generally usable.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux    http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
 `. `'   schroot and sbuild  http://alioth.debian.org/projects/buildd-tools
   `-    GPG Public Key      F33D 281D 470A B443 6756 147C 07B3 C8BC 4083 E800