[debhelper-devel] Bug#887571: Bug#887571: debhelper: dh lies about what it does, breaks builds by creating new files, etc

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

Norbert Preining:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 11.1.2
> Severity: serious
> Justification: breaks other packages
> 
> Dear DebHelper developers,
> 
> thanks for your efforts, but it would be very helpful if debhelper/dh
> would stick to what itself says it is doing.
> 
> I am trying to build texlive-bin, and somewhere at/around the configure
> stage files
>   configure.lineno
> are created, which break building:
>   checking whether g++ accepts -g... no
>   checking dependency style of g++... none
>   checking what warning flags to pass to the Objective C++ compiler...
>   ../../../texk/web2c/configure: 20010: ./configure.lineno: Syntax error: Bad fd number
>   === configuring in web2c failed
> 
> I confirmed the following:
> * doing the same invocation of configure manually does NOT create
>   configure.lineno and the build succeeds.

I suspect it might be the shell.  Make resets SHELL to /bin/sh AFAIR and
the error smells like a bashism with a non-bash shell.

Could you please retest with "export SHELL=/bin/bash" set in your
debian/rules (or a SHELL=/bin/bash in front of the dh_auto_configure call).

> * what dh says it is doing with 
>     dh binary --no-act ...
>   is *different* from what is actually happening, since doing the exact
>   same things as listed by dh binary --no-act immediately breaks
> 
> Example for this (the reautoconf stage has already been done):
>   $ dh binary --no-act --with autoreconf --builddirectory Work
>   debian/rules override_dh_auto_configure
>   dh_auto_build -O--builddirectory=Work
>   dh_auto_test -O--builddirectory=Work
> > [...]
> 
> Best
> 
> Norbert
> 
> [...]

The missing options/incomplete cmd-line is related to #552276.

Thanks,
~Niels