Bug#383394: [Pbuilder-maint] Bug#383394: pbuilder: Fails to build if source tree has files with zero size

[Junichi Uekawa]

Hi,

> > Please give more specific information.
> > 
> Take any upstream tar-ball and debianize it with dh_make.
> 
> Apply autotools to the package.
> In the process of running autoreconf -i you will have a number of  
> required files created with zero contents: NEWS, ChangeLog, AUTHORS etc.
> Run dpkg-buildpackage and you will get a newly crated deb-package  
> without warnings or errors - not lintian/linda clean off-course.
> Now run pdebuild and you will see error messages like the following:
> 
> dh_installdocs -a
> cp: cannot stat `NEWS': No such file or directory
> dh_installdocs: command returned error code 256
> make: *** [binary-arch] Error 1
> pbuilder: Failed autobuilding of package

That's not pbuilder behavior; that's diff/patch, dpkg standard
behavior.

If the empty files are in upstream tarball, the problem won't happen,
but if it's in Debian diff, zero sized files are deleted.

I can reproduce the behavior with the following sequence.

$ mkdir ttt-1
$ cd ttt-1
$ touch ../ttt_1.orig.tar
$ gzip ../ttt_1.orig.tar
$ dh_make
$ touch NEWS
$ dpkg-buildpackage -S -rfakeroot
$ dpkg-source -x ../ttt_1-1.dsc
$ ls -l 
[06:27:06]dancer64:ttt-1> ls -l

-rw-r--r-- 1 dancer dancer   0 2006-08-18 06:22 NEWS
drwxr-xr-x 2 dancer dancer 520 2006-08-18 06:22 debian
drwxr-xr-x 3 dancer dancer  60 2006-08-18 06:25 ttt-1
-rw-r--r-- 1 dancer dancer  35 2006-08-18 06:25 ttt_1.orig.tar.gz
[06:27:51]dancer64:ttt-1> ls -l ttt-1/

drwxr-xr-x 2 dancer dancer 500 2006-08-18 06:25 debian


regards,
	junichi
-- 
dancer@{debian.org,netfort.gr.jp}   Debian Project