Jussi Pakkanen:
On Thu, 27 Jul 2023 at 17:45, Simon McVittie <s...@debian.org> wrote:
As far as I'm aware, we never want to include .pyc in Debian packages,
so I think debhelper's meson build system plugin should be turning this off
as a standard setting for all Debian packages (similar to the way it
sets --prefix=/usr as a standard setting for all Debian packages).
Do the Meson maintainers agree?
Obviously the defaults should do the correct thing. In fact until
yesterday that is what I thought the code does not do byte
compilation. We might even consider changing the default for this as I
would imagine all distros will hit the same issue.
If meson changes the default here upstream, then I would say that is
preferable to changing debhelper.
Is there a way this can be done, without making packages FTBFS if debhelper
is backported to an older suite but Meson is not? -Dpython.bytecompile=-1
will cause `meson setup` to fail if Meson is an older version, and I'm not
aware of a way to say "set this option if supported, ignore if not" without
parsing `meson --version` and comparing it with a threshold.
Is there ever a case where debhelper would be backported byt Meson is
not? Now an expert but Meson sees a fair number of backports so I'd
imagine it to be the more up to date of the two packages.
If we can rely on meson in stable(-backports) having the feature, a
simple Breaks in debhelper + unconditional use in the parameter is how I
would go about it if we need to change debhelper
Further, debhelper updates would be gated on test failures, right? So
if someone did try to update it then there would be immediate errors?
This would be the simplest solution if it is acceptable.
The debhelper package does not have any tests covering the meson build
system (or most of its other build systems). In fact, debhelper just
has a "handful" of tests for a dozen of its 50+ helpers.
It should not be so, but sadly it is. Unless you mean "the archive
breaking" as a test suite/failure (but that is hardly "gated"), then
debhelper is going to disappoint you here.
Best regards,
Niels
