Bug#509192: pygobject: timestamp skew can cause misbuild with wrong python versions

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 03:14:08PM +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Looking at the pygobject source package in hardy-updates, it includes
> > the following two patches:
> 
>  (the source against which you report doesn't have this problem anymore
>  as it uses a separate patch for autotools stuff)

As I noted in my report, the problem is dormant rather than truly gone.

> > I am inclined to recommend approach (c) for the future, on the basis
> > that it is a more permanent fix. The attached patch does this. (In fact
> > it's probably slightly overkill since second and subsequent make calls
> > won't run ./config.status --recheck again, but I thought overkill was
> > better than underkill.)
> 
>  Thanks for the patch (merged); I also added a --disable-maintainer-mode
>  flag to configure which we weren't explicitely passing (but should be
>  the default since we add AM_MAINTAINER_MODE to configure.ac); I don't
>  quite know how timestamp skews have triggerred a recheck here
>  overriding maintainer mode being disabled.

I agree with you and Joss that AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is a good way to
prevent the recheck happening in the first place;
debian/patches/03_maintainer_mode.patch wasn't present in the 2.14.2
package in hardy-updates which I imagine is why the recheck still
happened.

Even so, it seems relatively fragile until and unless AM_MAINTAINER_MODE
is applied upstream as well. Relying on debian/patches/ to fix a problem
that manifests while applying debian/patches/ doesn't make me feel
right, although I suspect that in this particular case it would work.
For subtle misbuilds like this, I have to say I feel more comfortable
with fixing it in such a way that it still works even if the first line
of defence fails; passing the environment variable to 'make' guarantees
that even if a recheck happens for some unforeseen reason then it still
works.

Thanks to you both,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]