Package: dpkg-dev Version: 1.22.8 Severity: important Dear Maintainer,
It looks like recent changes to dpkg-dev affects a bunch of packages that I maintain. Concretely, the package radicale now fails to build, as it passes an empty version number to help2man. This was reported as bug#1076915. Seemingly related bug#1076568 made me try downgrade dpkg-dev, and indeed with dpkg-dev 1.22.6 the variable DEB_VERSION_UPSTREAM_REVISION again resolves correctly. It looks like recent dpkg-dev offers variable expansion only inside make rules, not for make code declares "at the core", outside of make rules. Many of the packages I maintain rely on the ability to resolve variables also at the core of the makefile. I am not furiously against changing my packaging patterns, but I imagine I am not the only one, so I guess such change needs more care and documentation (or perhaps just pointing me to the elaborate documentation that I have totally missed). Kind regards, - Jonas
