On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 17:15:20 +0100 Luca Boccassi
<luca.bocca...@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
