Package: devscripts Version: 2.25.2 Severity: normal X-Debbugs-Cc: stu...@debian.org
Dear Maintainer, Debian has an unusual and often problematic corner case: a binary package and a source package can have the same name but be completely unrelated. As a result, any code that accepts both source and binary package names as input needs extreme care. debcheckout allows apt to guess whether the name given to it is a binary package or a source package, and apt will guess differently depending on the tool that is invoked: - "apt-cache showsrc $pkg" will find all source packages and binary packages that match $pkg - "apt-get source $pkg" will try a binary package first unless --only-source is specified. If we try debcheckout with packages where there is both a binary and source package with the same name then weird behaviour occurs. If I ask for the package "ply" for instance, then debcheckout will find the correct VCS URL and git clone it, but then fail to obtain the source of the unrelated source package ply-probe (that ships the ply binary package). $ debcheckout --source=always ply declared git repository at https://salsa.debian.org/jcfp/ply.git git clone https://salsa.debian.org/jcfp/ply.git ply ... Cloning into 'ply'... remote: Enumerating objects: 1674, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (25/25), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done. remote: Total 1674 (delta 13), reused 25 (delta 13), pack-reused 1649 (from 1) Receiving objects: 100% (1674/1674), 535.37 KiB | 611.00 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (1005/1005), done. Reading package lists... Done Picking 'ply-probe' as source package instead of 'ply' E: Can not find version '3.11-7' of package 'ply' E: Unable to find a source package for ply-probe apt-get source failed Curiously, the failure is the same if one uses the binary package name, meaning that debcheckout has gone from binary package name to source package name and then accidentally used the source package name in an ambigious "binary or source" context: $ debcheckout --source=always python3-ply declared git repository at https://salsa.debian.org/jcfp/ply.git git clone https://salsa.debian.org/jcfp/ply.git python3-ply ... Cloning into 'python3-ply'... remote: Enumerating objects: 1674, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (25/25), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done. remote: Total 1674 (delta 13), reused 25 (delta 13), pack-reused 1649 (from 1) Receiving objects: 100% (1674/1674), 535.37 KiB | 551.00 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (1005/1005), done. Reading package lists... Done Picking 'ply-probe' as source package instead of 'ply' E: Can not find version '3.11-7' of package 'ply' E: Unable to find a source package for ply-probe apt-get source failed Given that debcheckout has figured out the correct source package name by the time it tries to use apt-get source (contrary to the comments in the code there), it could use --only-source to ensure that it picks the right package. regards Stuart
