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Anti-declarative packaging – top 15 build-helpers inserting maintscripts
Debian packages can run arbitrary code via “maintainer scripts” (sometimes shortened into “maintscripts”) during installation/removal etc. While they certainly have their use cases, their failure modes...
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mips64el added to Debian testing
Today, we have completed our first Britney run with mips64el enabled in testing. At the current time, the set of packages in mips64el are not very connected (and you probably cannot even install...
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Selecting key packages via UDD
Thanks to Lucas Nussbaum, we now have a UDD script to filter/select key packages. Some example use cases: Which key packages used compat 4? # Data file compat-4-packages (one *source* package per line)...
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debhelper 10 is now available
Today, debhelper 10 was uploaded to unstable and is coming to a mirror near you “really soon now”. The actual changes between version “9.20160814” and version “10” are rather modest. However, it does...
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Unseen changes to lintian.d.o
We have been making a lot of minor changes to lintian.d.o and the underlying report framework. Most of them were hardly noticeable to the naked. In fact, I probably would not have spotted any of them,...
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Stretch transition freeze in a month
It is the first of October and that means the transition freeze is roughly one month away (Nov 5th 2016). In other words, this is the “final boarding call for transitions”. Other milestone dates: If...
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Improvements in apt-file 3.1.2
Yesterday, I just uploaded apt-file 3.1.2 into unstable, which comes with a few things I would like to highlight. We fixed an issue where apt-file would not show top-level files in source packages....
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Piuparts integration in britney
As of today, britney now fetches reports from piuparts.debian.org and uses it as a part of her evaluation for package migration. As with her RC bug check, we are only preventing (known) regressions...
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The stretch freeze is coming
The soft freeze has been on going for almost a month now and the full stretch freeze will start tomorrow night (UTC). It has definitely been visible in the number of unblock requests that we have...
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On making Britney smarter
Updating Britney often makes our life easier. Like: smooth-updates (winter 2011) Adam’s accidental upgrade of the original auto-hinter[1] (winter 2012) A non-leaking installability tester (winter 2013)...
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debhelper 10.5.1 now available in unstable
Earlier today, I uploaded debhelper version 10.5.1 to unstable. The following are some highlights compared to version 10.2.5: debhelper now supports the “meson+ninja” build system. Kudos to Michael...
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Approaching the exclusive “sub-minute” build time club
For the first time in at least two years (and probably even longer), debhelper with the 10.6.2 upload broke the 1 minute milestone for build time (by mere 2 seconds – look for “Build needed 00:00:58,...
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Improving bulk performance in debhelper
Since debhelper/10.3, there has been a number of performance related changes. The vast majority primarily improves bulk performance or only have visible effects at larger “input” sizes. Most visible...
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Introducing the debhelper buildlabel prototype for multi-building packages
For most packages, the “dh” short-hand rules (possibly with a few overrides) work great. It can often auto-detect the buildsystem and handle all the trivial parts. With one notably exception: What if...
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Building packages without (fake)root
Turns out that it is surprisingly easy to build most packages without (fake)root. You just need to basic changes: A way to set ownership to “root:root” of paths when dpkg-deb –build constructs the...
View ArticlePrototyping a new packaging papercut fix – DRY for the debhelper compat level
Have you ever looked at packaging and felt it is a long exercise in repeating yourself? If you have, you are certainly not alone. You can find examples of this on the Debian mailing lists (among...
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Build system changes in debhelper
Since debhelper/11.2.1[1], we now support using cmake for configure and ninja for build + test as an alternative to cmake for configure and make for build + test. This change was proposed by Kyle...
View ArticleBuster is headed for a long hard freeze
We are getting better and better accumulating RC bugs in testing. This is unfortunate because the length of the freeze is strongly correlated with the number of open RC bugs affecting testing. If you...
View Article“debhelper-compat (= 12)” is now released
A few days ago, we released debhelper/12 and yesterday uploaded it to stretch-backports (as debhelper/12~bpo9+1). We deliberately released debhelper/12 so it would be included in buster for the...
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Improvements to apt-file since stretch
The list of changes for apt-file in buster is rather short, but I would still like to mention a few of them in this post. New list-indices command: In stretch, apt-file migrated to use apt’s new...
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