[debhelper-devel] Bug#836699: Add dh --with-indep, for sequence addons pulled in through Build-Depends-Indep

[Anders Kaseorg]

Package: debhelper
Version: 9.20160814

It would be useful to have dh $@ --with-indep ADDON, an analogue of dh $@ 
--with ADDON that only loads the addon when Architecture: all packages are 
being built.

See https://bugs.debian.org/818115 for the full background, but the 
summary is that the multiarch interpreter problem prevents python-sphinx 
from satisfying build dependencies for cross builds, so it must used only 
for building Architecture: all packages and pulled in through 
Build-Depends-Indep: python-sphinx.  That means the sphinxdoc sequence 
addon cannot be used as dh $@ --with sphinxdoc, unless 
Debhelper::Sequence::sphinxdoc is pulled in separately through

  Build-Depends-Indep: python-sphinx
  Build-Depends: sphinx-common

or the rules file goes through other contortions such as

  %-arch:
          dh $@
  %:
          dh $@ --with sphinxdoc

Because of this complexity, the doxygen maintainer has been reluctant to 
provide a corresponding doxygen sequence addon, and instead requires 
dh_doxygen to be called in an override target for specific packages 
(https://bugs.debian.org/799543).

If we could write

  %:
          dh $@ --with-indep sphinxdoc

such that dh_sphinxdoc -i is called after dh_installdocs when 
Architecture: all packages are built, and Debhelper::Sequence::sphinxdoc 
is not loaded when they are not, the complexity would be alleviated.

Anders