[debhelper-devel] Bug#885580: debhelper: dh add-ons are order sensitive

[Niels Thykier]

Package: debhelper
Version: 11
Severity: minor

As remarked in #570935:


"""
dh add-ons are order sensitive.  That is, there are cases where "--with
a,b" vs. "--with b,a" behaves different (the only know example was the
autotools-dev and autoreconf add-ons, where you always wanted --with
autotools-dev,autoreconf - in that order).

This is a nasty misfeature.  Unfortunately, it is a design flaw and
cannot be trivially fixed without rewriting the entire dh add-on system.
"""

With the "autotools-dev" sequence being retired, we no longer have a
(known) case of this issue.  I am filing this bug to document the
issue in (hopefully) unlikely situation that this kind of issue
reappears.

If we observe this problem again, then ideally we should fix this in
dh.  Like letting add-ons declare dependencies or
"before/after"-relations with other add-ons where necessary and have
dh shuffle them around.  This is not possible with the current add-on
design, so this implies changing the add-on design on top of that.

Thanks,
~Niels