In my attempt to convert e2fsprfogs's debian/rules to use dh, I'm running into yet another frustration with dh, which is that it insists on running the configure script twice.
The problem is that dh is trying to use build-arch and build-indep: % dh build --no-act debian/rules build-arch debian/rules build-indep And build-arch and build-indep both want to run configure: % dh build-arch --no-act dh_testdir -a dh_update_autotools_config -a debian/rules override_dh_auto_configure debian/rules override_dh_auto_build create-stamp debian/debhelper-build-stamp % dh build-indep --no-act dh_testdir -i dh_update_autotools_config -i debian/rules override_dh_auto_configure debian/rules override_dh_auto_build create-stamp debian/debhelper-build-stamp This seems.... amazingly non-optimal. I tried to see how other packages work around this misfeature, and I see that openssh just hacks things to make the second dh_auto_configure a no-op: override_dh_auto_configure-arch: dh_auto_configure -Bdebian/build-deb -- $(confflags) ifeq ($(filter noudeb,$(DEB_BUILD_PROFILES)),) dh_auto_configure -Bdebian/build-udeb -- $(confflags_udeb) # Avoid libnsl linkage. Ugh. perl -pi -e 's/ +-lnsl//' debian/build-udeb/config.status cd debian/build-udeb && ./config.status endif override_dh_auto_configure-indep: RLY? That seems like an amazing hack. Is there no other way to work around what appears to be massive mis-design in dh? If the goal is to make moving to dh a mandate, and working on Debian to be fun, we desperately need better documentation on how to use dh for real-world packages, and not just simple, trivial packages.... :-( - Ted