[PKG-Openstack-devel] Bug#864984: sahara: Build-depends on sudo (indirectly)

[Santiago Vila]

Package: sahara
Version: 1:5.0.0-3

Dear maintainer:

The sahara package (indirectly) build-depends on sudo.

When built by sbuild (stretch version), it builds ok, but when
packages installed in the chroot are automatically removed,
this is what happens:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Removing sudo (1.8.19p1-1) ...
You have asked that the sudo package be removed,
but no root password has been set.
Without sudo, you may not be able to gain administrative privileges.

If you would prefer to access the root account with su(1)
or by logging in directly,
you must set a root password with "sudo passwd".

If you have arranged other means to access the root account,
and you are sure this is what you want,
you may bypass this check by setting an environment variable
(export SUDO_FORCE_REMOVE=yes).

Refusing to remove sudo.
dpkg: error processing package sudo (--remove):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
-------------------------------------------------------------------

and the chroot becomes messed up for the next package when I'm not
using overlayfs.

The workaround is to set SUDO_FORCE_REMOVE=yes in the environment,
(yes, maybe sbuild should do that automatically) but even in such
case, I wonder:

Does this package really need sudo to build?

I think that would be very odd, because packages are always built
using an unprivileged user which only requires to be root
to create the .deb, and this is already done by fakeroot.

In case sahara does not really need sudo to build: Could we maybe find
the way to break the build-dependency chain leading to having sudo in
the build-depends?

Even if this is most probably not a bug in sahara itself, I think a
reassign would still make sense.

Thanks.