[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#959473: orthanc-dicomweb build-dependencies unsatisfiable on armel

[peter green]

Package: orthanc-dicomweb
Version: 1.1+dfsg-1
Severity: serious
x-debbugs-cc: node-axios

My self-contained buildability check script detected that armel binaries for orthanc-dicomweb were present in testing, but the build-dependencies for orthanc-dicomweb could not be satisified on armel. Specifically orthanc-dicomweb depends on the arch-all package node-axios which in turn depends on nodejs which is not available on armel.

What took me a while to figure out is how exactly things had got to this state.

It seems that orthanc-dicomweb gained the build-dependency on node-axios in version 1.0+dfsg-1 which got stuck in unstable for a while. A while later 1.0+dfsg-2 was uploaded, a request was made to the ftpmasters to remove the old packages ( https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=944732 ). The removal request was actioned and orthanc-dicomweb migrated to testing without armel support.

1.1+dfsg-1 was also uploaded and migrated to testing, initially without armel support.

Then a month or so later a buggy version of node-pegjs was uploaded that contained "Provides: libjs-pegjs, node-peg, nodejs, pegjs". The bug was fixed a week or so later, but not before it had allowed the buildds to build armel packages for orthanc-dicomweb 1.1+dfsg-1. The release teams build-dependency checks are not sophisticated enough to detect this either and so the armel binaries made it into testing (even though the package that had enabled them to build never did).

Since it seems that the orthanc-dicomweb build does not actually need nodejs (the armel build succeeded after-all) that would seem to leave two ways to get back to a consistent state.

1. Request again removal of the armel binaries. This is probablly the easiest option, but it's not really in keeping with "packages must be built on as many architectures as reasonably possible".
2. Restructure the "node-axios" package and it's dependencies to provide a "libjs-axios" package that can be installed without nodejs.

I am ccing the node-axios maintainers on this bug report so they can comment on the feasibility of providing a libjs-axios package that can be installed on architectures where nodejs is not available.

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