Bug#879798: FTBFS: testsuite fails with dpkg 1.19, patch attached

[Adam Conrad]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 08:59:23PM +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 10:40:20PM -0600, Adam Conrad wrote:
> 
> We like to backport devscripts, and I'd rather not have backports deltas
> if possible...

I'd suggest that this commit already makes no-delta backports somewhat
problematic:

https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/devscripts.git/commit/?id=921696fd6c92c4299accb1e2ef1ae48d13a47b0d

But ignoring that for a moment, how about this patch instead (tested
against dpkg 1.18.24ubuntu1 and 1.19.0.4ubuntu1):

diff -Nru devscripts-2.17.10/test/test_mk-origtargz devscripts-2.17.10ubuntu2/test/test_mk-origtargz
--- devscripts-2.17.10/test/test_mk-origtargz	2017-09-13 20:08:30.000000000 -0600
+++ devscripts-2.17.10ubuntu2/test/test_mk-origtargz	2017-10-26 22:38:49.000000000 -0600
@@ -26,6 +26,12 @@
     PROGNAME="mk-origtargz.pl"
 fi
 
+if dpkg --compare-versions $(dpkg-query -W -f='${Version}' libdpkg-perl) lt 1.19.0~; then
+    SUBPROCESS_ERROR="gave error exit status 2"
+else
+    SUBPROCESS_ERROR="subprocess returned exit status 2"
+fi
+
 cleanup(){
 	rm -rf $TMPDIR
 	unset LC_ALL
@@ -540,7 +546,7 @@
 		"tar: This does not look like a tar archive
 tar: Skipping to next header
 tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
-$PROGNAME: error: tar --list --auto-compress --file ../foo_0.1.orig.tar.xz gave error exit status 2" \
+$PROGNAME: error: tar --list --auto-compress --file ../foo_0.1.orig.tar.xz $SUBPROCESS_ERROR" \
 		"" \
 		 ../foo-0.1.tar.gz --repack --compression xz
 }

... Adam