peter green writes ("Bug#883340: dgit build accesses the internet and fails
when offline."):
> Trying to build a package with dgit build while offline results in an error
> message about api.ftp-master.debian.org There is no mention in the manpage
> section for dgit build about it accessing the internet in any way.
>
> This is problematic for two reasons.
>
> 1. It is really annoying to be unable to work while offline.
> 2. Undocumented access to the internet could be considered a privacy breach.
This is, sadly, inevitable, when using `dgit build'.
The reason is as follows:
dgit build (and dgit sbuild et al) do all the preparation work needed
to do a binary upload using dgit push. That includes generating the
.changes file.It would not be good to defer generation of the .changes
file because the user ought to be able to review everything before
invoking dgit push.
The .changes file is supposed to contain changes since the last upload
to the relevant distro. That involves knowing what that last upload
is. dgit automates this, querying the prospective destination server
so it can know the version to pass to dpkg-genchanges's -v option.
But, if the user were doing this by hand, they would probably have to
check that themselves by hand anyway.
So it is not possible to fully prepare a build-for-upload offline.
OTOH, if you are not trying to build for upload, then then there is no
need for this. Then it would be better not to use dgit build at all,
but rather to invoke dpkg-buildpackage.
Perhaps it would be useful for dgit to have a "not (yet) for upload"
build option, which generates source and binary packages, but not a
.changes file.
What do you think ?
TBH I would like to know what you were trying to do when you
encountered this problem - and which docs you read that led you to
choose this approach.
I would like to improve the docs.
In the meantime, a workaround would be to pass a -v option to dgit.
Then it would have no need to talk to an archive server to find this
information; and there is no other information in a build that comes
from off the local machine.
I hope this is helpful.
Regards,
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
