On Mon, Dec 29, 2025 at 08:13:30PM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote: > Sorry for noise, I found the likely reason:
No problem at all -- if anything, I appreciate following up on this and being as thorough as you are! > https://sources.debian.org/src/geoipupdate/7.1.0-1/debian/control#L8 > > That is, you are using 'Build-Depends-Arch' instead of 'Build-Depends' > to pull in 'golang-github-cenkalti-backoff-dev'. That's a good find! > None of my methods to find reverse build dependencies seem to deal with > this. > > I'm reading > https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html about the > header, but it doesn't manage to enlighten me. I don't recall using > this header myself, so I don't know its exact semantics. > > Is 'geoipupdate' right to use Build-Depends-Arch here? Excellent question. Quite honestly I don't recall how this got there; according to git, this dates back to the original packaging of the Go version in 2019. However, the control file was partially created using dh-make-golang, and its changelog entry for version 0.3.3-1 provides a clue: > - Move Build-Depends-{Arch,Indep} back into Build-Depends. > For Go packages, golang-any and dependencies are always needed > regardless of whether we are building a program or a library, > and it is not like we need e.g. texinfo to build *-doc packages, > so the use Build-Depends-Arch and Build-Depends-Indep served > no purpose other than unnecessarily complicating things. So I believe this is a historical artifact at this point. I just pushed a change to geoiupdate's git to deprecate this B-D-Arch usage, which will find its way into the next release. > Why doesn't 'dak rm' complain about removing a package? > > Why doesn't ratt/dose identify this package? These are both good questions, and I think orthogonal to whether geoipupdate was correct or not to use B-D-Arch. Regards, Faidon
