[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#633777: Bug#633777: sbuild: virtual dependency resolver broken?

[Thibaut VARENE]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Roger Leigh <rleigh at codelibre.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 05:38:16PM +0200, Thibaut VARENE wrote:

>> In any case, the fact is it breaks the virtual resolver for packages with multiple providers (i've tested that when there's only one provider, there is no problem. I suppose apt-get does
>> the right thing then).
>
> There are two areas of brokeness here: apt-get and sbuild itself.
> While apt-get is definitely misbehaving here, sbuild's "internal"
> resolver is also absolutely awful at working with virtual packages.
> While we did do some refactoring when introducing the "apt" resolver,
> it could well be that the root cause was apt-get being broken.
> You could try using the "apt" resolver which delegates all dependency
> resolution to apt-get.  It's the default in current unstable, and
> can handle virtual dependencies without issues, including alternatives.

So, I tried the 'aptitude' resolver, since I couldn't find any mention
of a 'apt' resolver in the source code (note by the way that as far as
I can tell, none of this is documented anywhere ;P) using the
following in .sbuildrc:
$build_dep_resolver="aptitude";

And it did "fix" the issue, while installing more stuff (aptitude)
into the chroot.

> I would also suggest trying the latest sbuild/libsbuild-perl in
> testing/unstable.  They should run without problems on squeeze by
> design.  If the bugs are still causing problems with this version,
> we can at least address them whereas updating the squeeze version
> is rather more difficult.

Well, given the lack of documentation, especially on upgrade process,
and my previous experience with generally painful upgrades from
version to version (0.60 entirely broke backward compatibility with
0.58 configs), I'm not exactly thrilled by the idea... ;P

Cheers,
T-Bone

-- 
Thibaut VARENE
http://www.parisc-linux.org/~varenet/