Bug#514656: pbuilder: does not handle comments in debian/control correctly

[Adeodato Simó]

Package: pbuilder
Version: 0.185
Severity: important
Tags: patch

Hello,

I don't use pbuilder myself, but a user who tried to build one of my
packages reported this problem to me, and after inspection I think it is
a bug in pbuilder.

The involved package is amule, which used to have a debian/control in
the form of:

-8<-
Source: amule
...
Build-Depends: 
 autotools-dev,
 debhelper,
 quilt,
 ##
 libwxgtk2.8-dev,
 etc
-8<-

With this, pbuilder died for this user with:

  dpkg-deb: parse error, in file
  `/tmp/satisfydepends-aptitude/pbuilder-satisfydepends-dummy/DEBIAN/control'
  near line 7 package `pbuilder-satisfydepends-dummy':
  `Depends' field, invalid package name `##': must start with an alphanumeric

It was pointed out to me that such use of the '#' character in
debian/control is not correct: according to deb-control(5), comments
are allowed, but the hash character must not be preceded by whitespaced.
Hence, I fixed my debian/control to read:

-8<-
Source: amule
...
Build-Depends: 
 autotools-dev,
 debhelper,
 quilt,
##
 libwxgtk2.8-dev,
 etc
-8<-

But the error persisted. I would say that it's get_control_re() fault,
that does not support comments. Adding this to that function should
work:

    cat "$control" |
        awk '
        BEGIN { source=1 }
        /^$/ { source=0 }
        /^Source:/ { source=1 }
        /^[^ ]*:/ { p=0 }
+       /^#/ { next }
        tolower($0) ~ /^'"$re"':/ { p=1 }
        { if (p && source) { print $0 } }' |
        sed 's/^[^: ]*://'

I've CC'ed in this bug to the user that had this problem. Maybe he can
confirm whether this patch fixes the issue for him.

Thanks,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
- You look beaten.
- I just caught Tara laughing with another man.
- Are you sure they weren't just... kissing or something?
- No, they were laughing.
                -- Denny Crane and Alan Shore