On Fri, 26 Nov 2021 at 22:10:45 -0800, Otto Kekäläinen wrote: > Lintian in Debian unstable has a new test that my package is failing on: > https://lintian.debian.org/tags/no-code-sections
As with any Lintian tag, I would recommend doing your own assessment of whether this is a real error before assuming there is a bug that you need to fix. This particular one looks like it's a Lintian bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1000469 (fixed in git) Looking at the results reported with current Lintian, it seems to me that this check was initially assuming that every object file (.o) in a static library is expected to contain at least some executable code, but I don't think that's really true: * some translation units end up effectively empty, because they contain only functions that are #ifdef'd out under the build options in use, for example SDL_evdev_kbd_freebsd.o in a Linux build of libSDL2.a * some translation units contain global variables but no executable code, for example (guessing from its name) decomposition-table.o in libunistring The resolution in Lintian git was to make this check only trigger if *the entire static library* contains no executable code, which seems reasonable (and in the rare case that a static library intentionally contains only variables and no code, it would be appropriate for a maintainer who knows that to override the hint). If feasible, an excellent way to verify that a static library is practically usable would be to add an autopkgtest that statically links a simple executable that calls one of your library's functions, and then runs that executable. If you add a test like this, please remember to flag it as 'superficial' to indicate that it doesn't provide thorough test coverage. smcv
