[debhelper-devel] Bug#881427: debhelper: dh_builddep fails, causing FTBFS: undefined value as an ARRAY reference

[Hilko Bengen]

Package: debhelper
Version: 10.10.6
Severity: grave

Dear Maintainer,

my recent upload of yara/3.7.0-3, using debhelper/10.10.6, failed in the
autobuilders[1], here are the last few lines before the failure:

,----
| make[1]: Leaving directory '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>'
|    dh_installman -a
|    dh_lintian -a
|    dh_perl -a
|    dh_link -a
|    dh_strip_nondeterminism -a
|    dh_compress -a
|    dh_fixperms -a
|    dh_missing -a
|    dh_strip -a
|    dh_makeshlibs -a
|    dh_shlibdeps -a
|    dh_installdeb -a
|    dh_gencontrol -a
|    dh_md5sums -a
|    dh_builddeb -a
| Can't use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference at /usr/bin/dh_builddeb line 134.
| dpkg-deb: building package 'libyara3' in '../libyara3_3.7.0-3_amd64.deb'.
| dpkg-deb: building package 'yara' in '../yara_3.7.0-3_amd64.deb'.
| dpkg-deb: building package 'libyara-dev' in '../libyara-dev_3.7.0-3_amd64.deb'.
| dh_builddeb: Aborting due to earlier error
| debian/rules:5: recipe for target 'binary-arch' failed
| make: *** [binary-arch] Error 2
| dpkg-buildpackage: error: fakeroot debian/rules binary-arch subprocess returned exit status 2
`----

Previous builds using debhelper/10.10.5, had gone fine. I have taken the
following steps to narrow the problem down to the 10.10.6 upgrade:

1. Build yara/3.7.0-3 on a not-quite-up-to-date Debian/unstable amd64
   environment, including debhelper/10.10.5. This works fine.

2. Upgrade debhelper to 10.10.6.

3. Rebuild yara/3.7.0-3. This reproduces the failure from the build log
   above.

Cheers,
-Hilko

[1] https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=yara&arch=amd64&ver=3.7.0-3&stamp=1510407411&file=log