Bug#931731: perl: autopkgtest to check for Perl related build cycles in the archive

[Niko Tyni]

Package: perl
Version: 5.28.1-6
Severity: wishlist

Filing #931730, it occurred to me that we could flag perlapi-* related
build dependency cycles automatically by having an autopkgtest check in
src:perl that looks for them.

This would block any such build dependency cycles from reaching testing
and highlight the issue for maintainers.

While we noticed the build cycle early this time because we've been
running Perl 5.30 test rebuilds continuously, with other timing it might
take up to a year before anybody notices.

The code we currently use for calculating the rebuild order is at

  https://salsa.debian.org/perl-team/scripts/tree/master/perl-transitions

and could probably be simplified to just alert on build dependency cycles.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org