Package: maint-guide
Version: 1.2.18-svn
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

Osamu sent[1] a link to the “default rules” section[2] of the new
maintainers’ guide, which is quite nice.

However, I fear it makes dh look a little more like black magic
than it really is.  All my debian/rules files include something
like this:

 #!/usr/bin/make -f
 
 build clean install binary-arch binary-indep binary:
        +dh --parallel $(opt_no_act) $@
 
 opt_no_act =
 ifneq (,$(findstring n,$(MAKEFLAGS)))
     opt_no_act = --no-act
 endif

This make it easy to use "debian/rules -n install", say, to learn what
files are run as part of the install target.

Maybe the newmaint guide could advertise the --no-act option so others
can help themselves in this way.  I am thinking of something like
this:

| Lines 12 and 13 are where all the work is done. The percent sign
| matches all targets; they then call a single program, dh, passing
| the target’s name as an argument.  The dh command is a wrapper
| script which runs an appropriate sequences of dh_* programs
| depending on its argument.  These sequences can be listed with the
| --no-act option.
| 
| For example, "debian/rules clean" runs "dh clean"; the list of
| commands that runs can be listed as follows:
| 
|      $ dh --no-act clean
|      dh_testdir
|      dh_auto_clean
|      dh_clean
[...]
|
| "debian/rules build" runs "dh build", which in turn runs the
| following:
|
|      dh_testdir
[...]

What do you think?
Jonathan
using maint-guide version 1.2.18-svn, 2010-05-16 03:40:20 UTC

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/05/msg00202.html
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ch-dreq.en.html#s-defaultrules



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