[debhelper-devel] Bug#873043: Bug#873043: debhelper: Please mv Debian lib/Debian for case-insensitive filesystems

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 pending

Geoffrey Thomas:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 10.7.2
> Tags: patch
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> Hi Debhelper maintainers,
> 

Hi,

> I would sort of like to use Debhelper to build Debian packages on macOS,
> as an alternative to homebrew etc.

Thanks for the interest. :)

Let me know if there are other things that would be useful to the macOS
port. :)

> The general process of bootstrapping
> Debian on macOS takes a lot of steps, but one of the sillier steps is
> creating a case-sensitive disk image, because Debhelper ships both a
> debian/ and Debian/ directory. The default macOS root filesystem is
> case-preserving but not case-sensitive, so extracting a tarball
> containing debian/ and Debian/ will cause one directory to clobber the
> other.
> 

Indeed, I have considered fixing it earlier but never got around to do
it.  Thanks for providing a patch. :)

> I have a commit at
>    https://gitlab.com/geofft/debhelper
> which does a `git mv Debian lib/Debian` (removing the existing lib -> .
> symlink), plus a few fixes to point things at the Debian subdirectory.
> I've tested that the resulting binary packages are identical to the one
> in unstable, other than the changed path in debian/copyright (and the
> lack of doc/SMARTER-BUILDSYSTEMS, which seems not to have been committed
> to git). I've also confirmed that `prove -vwlr t`, as mentioned in the
> commit introducing the lib symlink, continues to pass. For review, you
> probably want to use `git show -M` on my patch to recognize the renames.
> 

Excellent. :)  Indeed, SMARTER-BUILDSYSTEMS has not been committed.  It
is a WIP document for summarizing my thoughts on the use-cases.

> Can you please consider applying this patch? Thanks!
> 

Done as 3e2178efae2a2ce3ec9b8c56c7709370887a3652, it will be a part of
10.7.3 or 10.8.


Thanks,
~Niels