On 2016-04-15 21:57 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 9.20160403
> Severity: important
>
> Hello debhelper maintainers,
>
> There is a circular dependency between debhelper, dh-autoreconf and
> dh-strip-nondeterminism:
>
> debhelper :Depends: dh-strip-nondeterminism, dh-autoreconf (>= 12~)
> dh-autoreconf :Depends: debhelper
> dh-strip-nondeterminism :Depends: debhelper
>
> Circular dependencies are known to cause problems during upgrade, so we
> should try to avoid them.
The severity of this bug has been downgraded to minor by the maintainer,
which seems fair as the circular dependencies are unlikely to actually
cause problems.
Nevertheless, perhaps it is a good idea to split the debhelper perl
modules off to a libdebhelper-perl package. Then addons like
dh-autoreconf and dh-strip-nondeterminism can depend on
libdebhelper-perl rather than debhelper. This does not only break the
circular dependency, but also gives a better idea which packages that
currently depend on debhelper need the commands and which need the perl
modules. After all, some day debhelper might be rewritten in
Python. ;-)
I have created a branch for the package split on salsa[1], assuming that
12.6 would the version where the split occurs. If the debhelper
maintainer thinks this is a good idea, I can send a merge request.
Otherwise, tagging the bug as wontfix looks reasonable.
Cheers,
Sven
1. https://salsa.debian.org/joachim-guest/debhelper/tree/libdebhelper-perl
