Control: severity -1 serious
Control: retitle -1 missing dependency on dpkg-dev
Control: tags -1 + patch
Justification: missing dependency
On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 02:11:30PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> while debspawn recommends build-essential, it can be installed without
> dpkg-dev present. In this case, debspawn create fails with a python
> backtrace because it cannot find dpkg-architecture.
I confirm.
> This should either be a clearer error message ("dpkg-architecture
> missing, install dpkg-dev to allow operation") or dpkg-dev should be a
> Depends.
I disagree with the former here. Quite evidently, trying to use debspawn
without dpkg-dev is not a supported configuration. As such, a better
error message seems unnecessary to me. There is no reasonable way to use
dpkg-dev without dpkg-architecture and as such there should be the
dependency you suggest. It also happens to be easy trivial to fix and
such a fix is appropriate during freeze.
Let me also propose a different solution to the problem at hand.
Basically, the only thing that dpkg-architecture is being used for is
`dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_ARCH`. Its output is used as a fallback
when no architecture is provided by the user. It is intended to serve
the architecture of the running system (even though that's not quite
what it does). A simpler way to do that is dpkg --print-architecture and
in doing so, the dpkg-dev dependency is avoided. I'm attaching a patch
to that end.
Either the patch or the dependency should be applied in time for
bullseye.
Helmut
--- debspawn-0.4.1.orig/debspawn/osbase.py
+++ debspawn-0.4.1/debspawn/osbase.py
@@ -56,9 +56,9 @@ class OSBase:
def _make_name(self):
if not self._arch:
- out, _, ret = safe_run(['dpkg-architecture', '-qDEB_HOST_ARCH'])
+ out, _, ret = safe_run(['dpkg', '--print-architecture'])
if ret != 0:
- raise Exception('Running dpkg-architecture failed: {}'.format(out))
+ raise Exception('Running dpkg --print-architecture failed: {}'.format(out))
self._arch = out.strip()
if self._variant:
--- debspawn-0.4.1.orig/tests/conftest.py
+++ debspawn-0.4.1/tests/conftest.py
@@ -70,12 +70,12 @@ def build_arch():
'''
from debspawn.utils.command import safe_run
- out, _, ret = safe_run(['dpkg-architecture', '-q', 'DEB_BUILD_ARCH'])
+ out, _, ret = safe_run(['dpkg', '--print-architecture'])
assert ret == 0
arch = out.strip()
if not arch:
- arch = 'amd64' # assume arm64 as default
+ arch = 'amd64' # assume amd64 as default
return arch
