Bug#1029957: g-ir-scanner: produces FHS violations by putting architecture-dependent files in /usr/share

[Helmut Grohne]

Source: gobject-introspection
Version: 1.74.0-3
Severity: serious
Justification: violates Debian policy section 9.1.1

g-ir-scanner produces .gir files, which are installed into
/usr/share/gir-1.0 e.g. by libgirepository1.0-dev. According to Debian
policy section 9.1.1, such placement must comply with FHS 3.0 and
according to FHS 3.0 section 4.11.1, data within this directory must be
architecture-independent. However, the .gir files typically vary with
the size of various types, the endianess and other aspects. Quite
obviously, they are not architecture-independent. Thus they violate
policy.

There is basically three ways to fix this. One option is to change the
location of .gir files to /usr/lib/<triplet>/gir-1.0. Doing so,
fundamentally removes any way of violating FHS due to the additional
remarks in Debian policy section 9.1.1.

The other option is to make gir files truly architecture-independent and
removing any architecture-specific aspects from them.

A third option is to update Debian policy to state exceptions to this
rule given such widespread violation.

I recognize that neither of the first two options is easy to implement.
The former involves a quite elaborate transition and the latter involves
quite a bit work work and likely also breaks some consumers. We also
shipped with this bug in multiple releases, so we certainly want to
ignore it for bookworm. Yet, this does not remove the fact that current
behaviour violates current policy.

Helmut