[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#529281: Bug#529281: sbuild and the Distribution field in .changes

[Roger Leigh]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 08:49:27PM +0200, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> (Dropping #647028 from CC. Roger's message, and most of Thorsten's
> message had nothing to do with lintian...)
> 
> * Roger Leigh <rleigh at codelibre.net>, 2011-10-29, 18:59:
> >it's now possible to run dpkg-parsechangelog and change the
> >distribution default when building locally.  This is the case
> >right now.
> >
> >This still doesn't solve the problem of building a local .dsc,
> >which would require an unpack of the source package to determine
> >the distribution, but does solve it for unpacked sources. Adding
> >support for using a .changes file in place of a .dsc is still on
> >my TODO, list.
> 
> The idea of running sbuild on *.changes sounds very weird to me, but
> as long as I don't have to use it, I don't really mind.
> 
> I understand that if you have only .dsc at hand, you need to know
> which chroot to use. So make -c mandatory if -d is not given, and
> the problem is solved.

This would indeed solve the problem.  The main issue preventing this
would be the breaking of interface backward compatibility for sbuild
users.

> >Once a .changes is accepted, we could only permit setting the
> >distribution in buildd mode.
> 
> Why? Auto-detecting distribution is good, but what's wrong with an
> option to set it manually?

Is there ever a legitimate use for this?  That is, uploading to
Debian a package where the distribution in the .changes does not
match the one in debian/changelog?  Or even when building for local
use?

The -d option currently serves two roles:
• overriding of the distribution in the .changes
• selecting the build chroot

I would argue that the former is only required on the buildds,
but nowadays we're using schroot and even this is tenuous--it's
easy to add aliases for e.g. stable-proposed-updates for stable
etc.  The selection of the build chroot just provides a default
chroot to use if --chroot it's used to manually specify one.

It would certainly be possible to alter -d to only do the latter
when not in buildd mode, and potentially disable entirely should
the consensus be to do so.


Regards,
Roger

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