[debhelper-devel] Bug#833771: nspr FTCBFS: does not honour DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Mike,

On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 06:38:09AM +0900, Mike Hommey wrote:
> I'd argue dh should not be calling override_dh_auto_test in the first
> place...

Incidentally, I am fixing precisely this bug in a lot of packages, and
had the same idea. So even before filing this bug, I went to Niels and
discussed exactly that idea.

The gist of that discussion was that the suggested behaviour would add
inconsistency to debhelpers interface and could break packages. While
the common case is to actually run tests in the override target, they
can be used for anything. In keeping with our suggestion, maybe
override_dh_strip should be skipped for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nostrip? It's
not too hard to find actual packages broken by that move.

So our conclusion at that time (and maybe Niels had more and better
arguments) was that debhelper should not do that. Still, maybe some part
of its documentation could have a faq entry as it keeps popping up?

Even though I would have liked not having to send this patch to many
different packages, it looks like it's not gonna happen.

Helmut