Bug#859659: lintian: version-substvar-for-external-package raised for dbgsym packages from same source

[Luca Boccassi <luca.boccassi@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 2017-04-05 at 16:21 +0000, Niels Thykier wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 17:15:20 +0100 Luca Boccassi
> <luca.boccassi@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Package: lintian
> > Version: 2.5.50.1
> > Severity: normal
> > 
> > Dear Maintainer,
> > 
> > TL;DR: Lintian reports the version-substvar-for-external-package
> > error when the
> > "external package" in question is actually a dbgsym package
> > generated by the
> > same source package.
> > 
> > I maintain a source package, dpdk [1], which builds a great many
> > libraries.
> > Consequently, in stretch, a lot of dbgsym packages are generated.
> > 
> > As a shortcut, a colleague wanted to add an empty metapackage,
> > libdpdk-dbgsym,
> > which depends on all the generated -dbgsym packages. Unfortunately
> > Lintian
> > raises the (unoverridable) error mentioned above due to a line
> > similar to this:
> > 
> > Package: libfoo
> > ...
> > 
> > Package: libbar
> > ...
> > 
> > Package: foobar-dbg-meta
> > Depends: libfoo-dbgsym (= ${binary:Version}), libbar-dbgsym (=
> > ${binary:Version})
> > 
> > Given all the dbgsym packages have predictable names, and are
> > created from
> > packages listed in debian/control (ie: libfoo will be in
> > d/control), could
> > Lintian perhaps recognize this and avoid raising this error?
> > 
> > Thank you!
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > Luca Boccassi
> > 
> > [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dpdk
> > 
> > [...]
> 
> Hi Luca,
> 
> Unfortunately, you would just trade one issue for another (at least
> in
> Debian).  The dbgsym packages is going to a separate archive and the
> original packages are therefore not permitted to depend on them (the
> debug archive is optional, dependencies being satisfiable is not).
> 
> That said, I can appreciate this might make sense for third-party
> packages.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Niels

Hi Niels,

I understand, makes sense.

In our specific case at work, as you correctly guessed, we don't have a
separate archive (build and repository management system is Suse's OBS)
so it does work. Of course being an external use case from Debian I
can't ask for it to be supported, so please feel free to close the bug
if you wish.

Thanks!

Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi

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