Hi, while trying to get the nocheck build profile working, I stumbled over some discrepancies between
* Debian Policy §4.9.1, * dpkg-buildflags (behaviour + man page), and * lintian's long description of the tag override_dh_auto_test-does-not-check-DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS. lintian recommends, e.g. at https://lintian.debian.org/tags/override_dh_auto_test-does-not-check-DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS.html: > The debian/rules file for this package has an override_dh_auto_test > target that does not appear to check DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS against > nocheck. > > As this check is not automatically performed by debhelper(1), the > specified testsuite is run regardless of another maintainer using the > nocheck build profile. > > Please add a check such as: > > override_dh_auto_test: > ifeq (,$(filter nocheck,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS))) > ./run-upstream-testsuite > endif Please note that lintian explicitly mentions the "nocheck build _profile_". (Emphasis is mine.) The Debian Policy says at §4.9.1 respectively at https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#debian-rules-and-deb-build-options: > 4.9.1. debian/rules and DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS > > Supporting the standardized environment variable DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS is > recommended. This variable can contain several flags to change how a > package is compiled and built. Each flag must be in the form flag or > flag=options. If multiple flags are given, they must be separated by > whitespace. [14] flag must start with a lowercase letter (a-z) and > consist only of lowercase letters, numbers (0-9), and the characters - > and _ (hyphen and underscore). options must not contain whitespace. > The same tag should not be given multiple times with conflicting > values. Package maintainers may assume that DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS will not > contain conflicting tags. > > The meaning of the following tags has been standardized: > > nocheck > > This tag says to not run any build-time test suite provided by the package. Please note that the Debian Policy talks about "tags" and not about "profiles". And dpkg-buildpackage(1) says: > -P, --build-profiles=profile[,...] > > Specify the profile(s) we build, as a comma-separated > list (since dpkg 1.17.2, long option since dpkg 1.18.8). > The default behavior is to build for no specific > profile. Also sets them (as a space separated list) as > the DEB_BUILD_PROFILES environment variable which > allows, for example, debian/rules files to use this > information for conditional builds. DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS is primarily (if not only) mentioned for parallel building: > -j, --jobs[=jobs|auto] > > […] Also adds parallel=jobs or parallel to the > DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS environment variable which allows > debian/rules files to use this information for their own > purposes. […] So if I now use the code recommended by lintian to check for the nocheck build _profile_ and build with "dpkg-buildpackage -Pnocheck", my build fails, because DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS (as used by Lintian and documented in the Debian Policy at 4.9.1) does _not_ contain "nocheck" but just some "parallel=<n>" as documented by dpkg-buildpackage(1). But the build profile name can be found in DEB_BUILD_PROFILES as documented by dpkg-buildpackage(1). To make easier to understand where my problem lays, here's a (more or less real-world) example: Given this code in debian/rules: > override_dh_auto_test: > ifeq (,$(filter nocheck,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS))) > echo "$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)" > echo "$(DEB_BUILD_PROFILES)" > exit 2 > endif The first two lines and the last line are copy and paste from the mentioned lintian tag's long description. If I now build this package with "dpkg-buildpackage -Pnocheck", it should IMHO build fine without running the tests, but it fails as follows: > debian/rules override_dh_auto_test > make[1]: Entering directory '/home/abe/<pkg>/<pkg>' > echo "parallel=4" > parallel=4 > echo "nocheck" > nocheck > exit 2 > make[1]: *** [debian/rules:50: override_dh_auto_test] Error 2 > make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/abe/<pkg>/<pkg>' > make: *** [debian/rules:24: binary] Error 2 > dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status > 2 Please note that nocheck and parallel=4 are not echoed by the same echo statement, i.e. are in separate DEB_BUILD_* variables. So my first guess was that lintian's documentation and tag name was wrong and that DEB_BUILD_PROFILES should have been meant. That would affect 1135 source packages: https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=nocheck%2C%5C%24%5C%28DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS%5C%29 Ugh. (65 are using DEB_BUILD_PROFILES instead.) But then I found https://bugs.debian.org/889746 which exactly demanded earlier this year the opposite of what I had in my mind to fix this: to rename override_dh_auto_test-does-not-check-DEB_BUILD_PROFILES to override_dh_auto_test-does-not-check-DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS. (Cc'ing Mattia explicitly because he requested that change.) So now I wonder: what is wrong and needs to be fixed? A) lintian by mixing up build tags and build profiles? (Maybe this mentioning of build profiles was overseen when fixing #889746.) B) dpkg-buildpackages by not setting nocheck in DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS? C) debian-policy (and #889746 + lintian as a followup issue) by documenting DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS and DEB_BUILD_PROFILES both mixed under DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS? D) Something completely different like dh or so? Or am I just missing something totally essential and don't see the forest for the trees? And a more general question, especially in case A: If I want to build something with the build-profile nocheck, do I really have to set DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS myself separately to "nocheck" in addition to "-Pnocheck"? That sounds very counterintuitive to me… Regards, Axel -- ,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/ : :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin `. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5 `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
