Control: tags -1 wontfix
Daniel Leidert:
Package: debhelper
Version: 13.11.4
Severity: normal
I have a native package source from which I build multiple binary packages. The
files are organized as they would be on the target system with their full
destination path. As an example, the souirce directory contains:
./usr/share/applications/foo.desktop
[...]
This might be a cornercase, but I find it quite weird that it isn't working and
I could really use this. Is that a bug or a feature request?
Regards, Daniel
[...]
Hi Daniel
You have indeed hit a corner case and I do not think it makes sense to
change dh_missing to support it.
You can trivially work around it by moving the "FS layout" into a
subdirectory (e.g., "mkdir root && mv ... root/") and then use "root" as
the --sourcedir for the dh_* tools that need --sourcedir.
As for having dh_missing support "$(CURDIR)", then most packages have a
lost of "cruft" in "$(CURDIR)" that you would have to manually exclude -
you see it already with your own cmd-line having to ignore debian +
README. There is one "exciting" thing here in that excludes are
"global" - so the -X README.md ignores `README.md` *anywhere* it might
occur, so you do not get warnings if you get install a `README.md` from
somewhere (that is not the root). Probably benign in most cases but also
surprising for most - and changing the -X semantics would be a pain.
For these (and other reasons), dh_missing is built around the concept of
checking the output of "make install" rather than the source root. I do
not see a good reason nor a compelling argument for changing that given
the trivial work around for this one corner case, where might have been
useful.
Accordingly, I have tagged the bug as wontfix.
Best regards,
Niels
