[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#557167: iw: git called during build, possibly causing confusion or even FTBFS

[Christoph Biedl]

Package: iw
Version: 0.9.14-1
Severity: normal

Hello,

during the build, upstream's Makefile calls the shipped version.sh,
one of the commands there is

| if head=`git rev-parse --verify HEAD 2>/dev/null`; then

This is probably a remainder of a upstream's build concept which is
not included in Debian, as there is also no git repository here, and
git-core is not in the list of build dependencies.

If git is not installed, the error is caught and dealt in a sane way.
However, if git _is_ installed and there's a git repository (read:
.git directory) anywhere in a parent directory, that one is used.
Then either the check
| [ "${descr%%-*}" = "v$VERSION" ] || exit 2
will very likely fail, thus aborting the build process.  Or, as in my
case, that repository is owned by a different user, this caused an odd
error message
| fatal: unable to create '.git/index.lock': Permission denied
with the same outcome.

I suggest to drop that test entirely.

    Christoph

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.27.39 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
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