[debhelper-devel] Bug#837585: Please build transitional dh-systemd package from src:debhelper

[Michael Biebl]

Source: debhelper
Version: 10
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

Hi,

today we discussed the feasibility of a debhelper 10 backport for
jessie on #debian-devel.

The biggest issue here afaics is, that the dh_systemd* helpers were
moved from dh-systemd (built from src:init-system-helpers) into the
debhelper package itself. For that the debhelper package gained a
Breaks/Replaces: dh-systemd (<< 1.38).
dh-systemd was turned into a transitional package pulling in a new
enough debhelper version.

Backporting debhelper would thus mean also backporting a newer
src:init-system-helpers package. That in turn requires backports of
src:openrc, src:sysvinit and src:util-linux.
This is getting complicated quickly.

Afaics, the simplest solution would be, if the dh-systemd transitional
package was built from src:debhelper and not src:init-system-helpers.

We also discussed if the Provides in debhelper wasn't sufficient for
that. But concerns were raised that the build infrastructure (for
jessie) is not yet ready for versioned Provides.

The version number of debhelper is already higher, so it would just work
afaics. The debhelper package could then drop the Provides: dh-systemd
and we could drop the dh-systemd transitional package from
src:init-system-helpers in a subsequent upload.

I've pushed the necessary changes for debhelper to a branch at [1]

Feedback welcome.

Regards,
Michael

[1] https://anonscm.debian.org/git/debhelper/debhelper.git/log/?h=biebl/dh-systemd-compat


-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.7.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

-- no debconf information