pkgstripfiles doesn't respect override_dh_installchangelogs targets
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
amavisd-new (Ubuntu) |
Won't Fix
|
Low
|
Unassigned | ||
Jammy |
Won't Fix
|
Low
|
Unassigned | ||
pkgbinarymangler (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
High
|
Unassigned | ||
Jammy |
Confirmed
|
High
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
During the course of preparing to satisfy an upstream RFP on the Debian BTS WNPP metapackage, I encountered some uncouth behavior on the part of pkgstripfiles, which is shipped by this package and almost entirely undocumented (no mention in the package description and no man page shipped).
As this is the first iteration of a Debian package it only has the single changelog entry, and so I decided to use an override_
However when the full package build process is performed, the upstream changelog was not present in the built package. A review of the build log revealed that pkgstripfiles had removed it just prior to completion of the build. This is not a good outcome on several levels, among them:
- As Ubuntu is a downstream fork, any packaging behavior which subverts published Debian Policy should behave as an "opt-in" function and should take care to announce itself even during scripted invocations so established workflows aren't cryptically subverted and cost users increased time spent simply to identify the culprit.
- Documentation should exist to explain the behavior and the logic behind its inclusion in the packaging process, placed where users are most likely to look for it. In this case a man page at pkgstripfiles(1) would've been lovely, or even one for the entire package at pkgbinarymangler(8) seems warranted at a minimum. The fact that the other executables in the package and their configuration files are described briefly in the package description but this one was not felt like dirty pool.
- The executable should have a HEREDOC to produce in response to invocation with a -h/--help flag explaining its usage. In a brief skim of its shell logic I saw no option parsing at all, which was a shame because I had no quarrel with its other behaviors during packaging and would've happily written another override target into debian/rules to allow it to remain in the dh sequence with a flag that deactivated only its internal 'clean_
- Ideally it would have the necessary logic to parse the obvious constructs in debian/rules for override targets related to its internal functions and turn those functions off which might impede the maintainer's work without intervention.
This was experienced on a system running the Kubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" development release.
Relevant package versions:
* dpkg - 1.20.5ubuntu1
* debhelper - 13.2ubuntu1
* pkgbinarymangler - 146
[1]: https:/
description: | updated |
Changed in amavisd-new (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Triaged |
tags: | added: server-triage-discuss |
tags: | added: rls-jj-incoming |
tags: | added: fr-2063 |
tags: | removed: rls-jj-incoming |
Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.