Bug#1140736: Built-Using: ${sphinxdoc:Built-Using} not automatically resolved in compat 14

[Michael Biebl]

Am 26.10.26 um 15:54 schrieb Dmitry Shachnev:

On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 09:02:24PM +0000, Sean Whitton wrote:

Like all Built-Using values, its purpose is for this Policy requirement:

     Some binary packages incorporate parts of other packages when built
     but do not have to depend on those packages.  ... When the license
     of either the incorporated parts or the incorporating binary package
     requires that the full source code of the incorporating binary
     package be made available, the "Built-Using" field must list the
     corresponding source package for any affected binary package
     incorporated during the build, [5] including an "exactly equal"
     ("=") version relation on the version that was used to build that
     version of the incorporating binary package.

When a package builds with sphinxdoc then the binary package includes, I
believe, image, .css and .js files that can only be found in sphinxdoc,
and not in the source package corresponding to the binary package with
the docs.

When a license of either package requires full source availability, we have
to keep the exact version of the other package around, which is what
Built-Using does.

Sphinx itself is BSD-2-clause, so it does not have any such requirement. Do we
have an example of a package using Sphinx, the license of which requires it?

I'm interested in an answer to this question as well.

Anyway, if it's really required by the license, I would keep things as they
are currently: in most cases not using ${sphinxdoc:Built-Using} is the right
thing to do, and when it's required by the license, the maintainer should add
that field explicitly.

I still plan to drop "Built-Using: ${sphinxdoc:Built-Using}" from src:rsyslog/rsyslog-doc with the next upload and I think an MBF would be useful as well, once the license situation is clarified. There are a lot of packages probably using "Built-Using: ${sphinxdoc:Built-Using}" for the wrong reason [1].

Regards,
Michael

[1] https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=Built-Using%3A+%24%7Bsphinxdoc%3ABuilt-Using%7D&literal=1&perpkg=1

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