On Sun, 1 Mar 2026, Tim Woodall wrote:
How should you construct a dsc for backports that depends on other backports
packages?
In particular, I'm trying to build something on Jessie. I can build it no
problem but something isn't quite working the way I expect and I think I need
to use jessie-backports for e2fsprogs.
(If there's a right way to do this that doesn't work on Jessie then that's
what I'm looking for, I _can_ solve this problem on Jessie, I just want to
learn how it's supposed to work)
My build-Depends is: (This works fine but pulls in the non-backported version
of a couple of libraries.)
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), libncurses-dev, automake, libtool, autoconf,
comerr-dev, e2fslibs-dev, libblkid-dev, libbz2-dev, liblzo2-dev,
libdevmapper-dev, libreadline-dev, libselinux1-dev, pkg-config, uuid-dev,
zlib
I've tried both:
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), libncurses-dev, automake, libtool, autoconf,
comerr-dev/jessie-backports, e2fslibs-dev/jessie-backports, libblkid-dev,
libbz2-dev, liblzo2-dev, libdevmapper-dev, libreadline-dev, libselinux1-dev,
pkg-config, uuid-dev, zlib
dpkg-source: error: error occurred while parsing Build-Depends
And setting the version on one or both of the packages:
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), libncurses-dev, automake, libtool, autoconf,
comerr-dev (>= 2.1-1.43.3-1~bpo8+1), e2fslibs-dev (>= 1.43.3-1~bpo8+1),
libblkid-dev, libbz2-dev, liblzo2-dev, libdevmapper-dev, libreadline-dev,
libselinux1-dev, pkg-config, uuid-dev, zlib
E: Build-Depends dependency for dump cannot be satisfied because candidate
version of package e2fslibs-dev can't satisfy version requirements
E: Build-Depends dependency for dump cannot be satisfied because candidate
version of package comerr-dev can't satisfy version requirements
Is there any way to do this just from the control file without pinning?
The versions are available, just not "candidate versions"
comerr-dev:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 2.1-1.42.12-2+deb8u2
Version table:
2.1-1.43.3-1~bpo8+1 0
100 http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports/main amd64
Packages
2.1-1.42.12-2+deb8u2 0
500 http://archive.debian.org/debian-security/ jessie/updates/main
amd64 Packages
2.1-1.42.12-2+b1 0
500 http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
e2fslibs-dev:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 1.42.12-2+deb8u2
Version table:
1.43.3-1~bpo8+1 0
100 http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports/main amd64
Packages
1.42.12-2+deb8u2 0
500 http://archive.debian.org/debian-security/ jessie/updates/main
amd64 Packages
1.42.12-2+b1 0
500 http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
I'm setting up a test to try this on bookworm-backports to see if one of the
above works there and this is just due to really old dpkg-source but I
thought I'd send the above first to ask...
FWIW I'm getting very similar building a backported package for
bookworm. I did wonder if the problem was needing to upgrade libextfs2
and/or libcom-err2 (on bookworm) but specifying both of those in the
control file doesn't help either:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
builddeps:/repo/pool/dump_0.4b54-1+1+tjw12r5.dsc : Depends: libcom-err2 (=
1.47.2-3~bpo12+1) but 1.47.0-2+b2 is to be installed
Depends: libext2fs2 (>=
1.47.2-3~bpo12+1) but 1.47.0-2+b2 is to be installed
Depends: comerr-dev (>=
2.1-1.47.2-3~bpo12+1) but 2.1-1.47.0-2+b2 is to be installed
Depends: libext2fs-dev (>=
1.47.2-3~bpo12+1) but 1.47.0-2+b2 is to be installed
Tim.
